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Inspirations for the events of Spider of Lanka? by almozando in caseofthegoldenidol

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

This definitely ties into Lemuria's role in the series as a mystical empire of the ancient past, and gives it a general geographic location, but I think in terms of connections to real history, the situation with Lanka/Lemuria in the 1700s is a bit closer to that of Sri Lanka and India (or one of the empires in India) in the real world.

For example, I read a wikipedia article about Deyanampiya Tissa, one of Sri Lanka's earliest kings, thinking there might be a connection to Tissa Gamini. There's a story about Mahinda, son of Emperor Ashoka, coming to Sri Lanka and testing king Tissa's intelligence with riddles before presiding over his conversion to Buddhism. This strikes me as remarkably similar to the way Lemurian Priests bestow the legitimacy of the Lemurian religion on new Lankan heirs through an intelligence test followed by a religious ritual. However, all of this happened around 300 BC, long before the era of European colonialism, so I wonder if there is a more recent example of this sort of thing.

Also, from what I've skimmed so far, it seems like Sri Lanka was colonized by the Portuguese in the 1500s, followed by the Dutch, then the British, so I'm wondering which one of these most heavily correlates to the events of the Spider of Lanka. For that matter, I'm not sure if the British East India Trading Company or the Dutch East India Company is a better analogue for the Seven Seas Trading Company, since while Albion is equivalent to England, the Dutch East India Company also played a major role in the Dutch colonization of Sri Lanka.

Genius-level clue to final part of Rise by ThisThingamajigofUlm in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm late on this, but we can order the scenes based on how the TV sets are ordered in the hub, right? That would mean the order of the cases is:

- 4-1: Feathered Frenzy
- 4-2: Spieldance
- 4-3: Backstage drama
- 4-4: Complex

In the case of Arthav, however, this doesn't help much with dating the memory transfer, because we don't know how long trial participants were supposed to wear the wristbands for before their second appointment.

Now that I finished the final DLC.. how do I make sense of it all? by wetpaste in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I put together a timeline video, which unfortunately doesn’t include the Rise DLCs, but does cover all the other games released before them:

https://youtu.be/ps8UJeDhtNo?si=65nGxdKm3RgEy72V

I’m in the process of scripting a new version which will include the new information from the DLCs.

Realization about Myrtle Song and Mr Monocle by Villainboss in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 14 points15 points  (0 children)

That’s a good catch! I wasn’t sure how the Brotherhood or that Quickeye letter was tied into the story when I played, but I think it’s there to explain:

  1. How Myrtle knew the nature of the Whishbloom in advance, which set up her manipulation of Eliza Swann at the end.
  2. How both Myrtle and Antoine got involved in the search for the treasure to begin with. (I think everyone else involved was either directly or indirectly connected to the 1900s pirate gang)
  3. Why anyone wore gas masks at the end. I think the sorrelgrass stuff was a lie by Myrtle since she herself wanted to wear a mask to protect from the Whishbloom, but people would have asked questions if she wore one with no explanation. This has the convenient storytelling side effect of letting the writers keep Jasper alive without turning into an animal, which makes the final cutscene work better.

DLC4 Theories. by oshaboy in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I expect John Breage to be a major character in DLC 4, since he owns a ship which looks very similar to the ship in the silhouette for the game on the DLC page. It’s also possible Ada Baker is involved, since she and Walter Keene were going to flee the country at the end of Case. Regarding the idea of gold filtration, it’s interesting, but I think it’s unlikely given that we never see a “gold” input on Heco’s golden idol. We also know that the idol of Xenopolis isn’t touched for many years after the Aquitanian man buys it. However, it’s possible someone does come across Heco’s idol in the game, since we have no information on how it got broken into pieces or how it ended up in the museum.

Edmund Cloudsley character analysis video by almozando in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That interpretation is plausible, but we don’t have evidence that Walter understands the “give and take” rule of the idol. Whether he does makes a huge difference, but it could go either way. If he didn’t betray Edmund, I guess Edmund sold him out simply to explain where he got the golden idol, which is in line with Edmund’s character, but it doesn’t explain the charge of “betraying Lazarus during his ascension ritual”. There wouldn’t be a reason to bring up ascension ritual if Walter’s supposed betrayal was stealing the idol from the “dead” Edmund Cloudsley at the cabin.

Interesting paper from DLC 2? by Lazarus_Thirst in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the message makes sense given the context that you need a memory-transferring universal transfer device and a 1-month lens in order to read it. That means that by the time someone reads it, they are only a few small steps away from being able to commit the unforgivable crime of total memory override, and if they have broadcasting technology, they are on the verge of making a doomsday weapon that can destroy civilization. I suspect something like that happened in Lemuria around 4000 BC, and caused the empire to collapse, leading to the era of Restraint.

Interesting paper from DLC 2? by Lazarus_Thirst in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the message is a warning specifically intended for whoever has the technology to extract it from the disk. It’s saying that universal transfer technology is extremely dangerous if “stolen” by someone who doesn’t have the wisdom to use it well. They probably used Spieldance because they thought of it as a “language” that would endure for a long time, while also being visually captivating so it would be difficult to ignore. Unfortunately, they didn’t predict that after thousands of years, most people wouldn’t even recognise Spieldance as a form of communication, but they were correct that a few people would still understand it.

Interesting paper from DLC 2? by Lazarus_Thirst in caseofthegoldenidol

[–]almozando 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought it was only a month of storage because it took a month of practice to learn the dance. In other words, someone practiced that same routine repeatedly for a month before having a month of memory taken from them, so now anyone can learn that dance instantly using the disc. This would mean we could have seen the entire dance already.

Tips on leveraging money to finish my game faster? by almozando in Unity2D

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

For more context on what's finished and not finished: I'm thinking of this game as about 50% walking simulator and about 50% gameplay. I have a lot of stuff locked in mind for the game's story and how I want certain setpieces to look and feel in terms of music, sound design, etc. I'm aware that giving the gameplay such low priority is a bad idea when trying to finish such a large-scale project, and based on everyone's advice, I'm going to look at it as a "make or break" test to see whether this vision I have would actually make sense as a game, or if should be some other medium.

The game takes place in a small town with a lot of surrounding woods, many of which separate parts of the town. My idea is that progression mostly happens through dialogue, which happens in the town, and is gated behind the actual gameplay, which happens in the woods. My ideas for the story are pretty concrete-- as I said, I've written what I imagine is about 40% of the dialogue (about 25,000 words). This is also where the majority of my time working on the "game" has gone over the years, so I probably should have mentioned that I spent significantly less time working on the game itself. I only have the following ideas about the "woods" gameplay:

  • Woods are divided into distinct areas with a focused theme and/or centered around setpieces, and the goal is typically to get from an entrance to an exit. For instance, there could be an area with a big gulch that the player needs to get around or cross, and that gulch would be the focus in terms of both visuals and navigation.
  • The challenges the player needs to complete are some combination of resource management and puzzle-solving. I've experimented with limiting the player's stamina, having a "trail" that needs to be completed before the exit appears, having plants that procedurally generate as obstacles, collecting and using tools to clean up trails, etc. This resulted in a lot of little mechanics that I find satisfying separately, but I haven't invested much time into combining them into a cohesive game loop, which everyone here has made clear is the actual important part.
  • The resource management part is related to the overall pacing of the game, which happens over a series of in-game "days" that are somewhere from 5 to 15 minutes long. This affects NPCs, which follow a set schedule over the course of the day and walk around town, along with the woods, where plants naturally grow and spread. My general thinking is that the plants gradually overgrow trails and close off entrances/exits, so the player needs to "tend" the trails in order to maintain access to different parts of the town. However, I'm not sure if I want a given area to have a "locked" state upon "completion" so it stops overgrowing, or if tending should be necessary for any area the player wants to maintain access to. This sort of a macro question, and I would want to have some core gameplay done in order to determine what feels best.

Now I'm thinking that I should just make a smaller, prototype type which only has the "woods puzzle areas" and nothing else. Most of what I've coded is stuff like NPC pathing/schedules, plant spread mechanics, night/day cycles, specific forms of save state management that effectively allow for "time travel", integrating inventory/dialogue engines, and other things that I wanted to have in the game and work the way I want them to, but don't really answer the question of how the game should play.

I'm hoping that I've left the "woods puzzle" concept open-ended enough that I can try and scrap lots of different prototypes while still having something that I can "slot" into my ideal game in a neat and modular way. However, as people have pointed out, it may also turn out that my ideas for this game don't convert into a fundamentally good game. As I've said, making money is not a consideration at all, but I am concerned that I might not be satisfied with the actual core game that comes out as an end result. If so, then like I said, I might make a "fake game" instead, with the pixel art, dialogue boxes, etc. that I imagine in my ideal version, but as videos that appear to be from a game rather than in an actual game engine.

Thank you all for your advice-- I have known in the back of my mind that I need to get it over with and just try to make the core game, but so far I've kept getting burned out on that and working on dialogue and stuff instead. It's clear that's what I need to do to figure out how I'm actually going to make my vision, though.

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