Navigation in Space (part 5)

One thing I noted with the submarine directions was that it was also related to what I'd been doing originally. Several years ago, I wrote a Solar Echoes novel (still unpublished) that, at one point in the story, described a very involved starship dogfight with a squadron of ships. Believe me, tracking each of the good guys and bad guys was not easy, especially when they were swarming around each other. I'm pretty good at visualizing things, though, so I was able to describe it well enough that my beta-readers all said they were able to follow it. What I did then, though, was to make the “stationary” reference point the starship itself. All directions were relative to the position of that starship's perspective. When calling out to a wingman for help against an enemy, the commander of that starship would indicate the enemy's position relative to him, which would help the wingman spot the position of the enemy once knowing where his ally was positioned in space. When referencing an enemy attacking his wingman, he would give directions based on the wingman's position rather than his own. It was a little rough, but at the same time, it helped the reader visualize positions without complex references. I also used the standard 12-point directions of our clock for directions, rather than degrees of a 360 circle. In the visual novel I'm writing, I intend to do the same, though I have brought in some of what I've learned from my Navy friend.

Navigation in Space (part 4)

There's a reason things are done in Star Trek the way they are. I've spent some time, myself, as a helmsman aboard the Enterprise in the VR game, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and it made me question starship navigational tropes. Why do we focus so much on X and Y coordinates (360 degrees left to right) and very little on Z (height and depth?) It's a paradigm we are accustomed to, because we've grown up in a world with sea level as the median, the upper atmosphere as our ceiling, and the ocean floor as our maximum depth. In the Star Trek game, it's not much different, and though you can theoretically fly any direction, starship engagements basically remain in a 2-dimensional flat plane. Sure, you can raise and lower your depth some, but for the most part, you are fighting along the X and Y axis, ignoring the Z most of the time. Yet as some of you know in the famous “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” movie, Captain Kirk outsmarts his X/Y-thinking enemy using the Z axis to his advantage. This is why I turned to my Navy friend, who explained to me how directions are conducted underwater in submarine maneuvers. In a submarine, directions would be given like this: “Helm, come to course 270. Diving Officer, make your depth 200, 10 degree down angle.” If an enemy sub was sighted: “Contact S-9 is bearing 090 with a 0-degree angle on the bow,” which means another vessel that is 90-degrees to the right and is heading directly at you. Using the 360 degree XY circle for directions and establishing an angle for depth or height on the Z axis (though without the sea level reference point) are definitely useful navigational directions for a starship pilot.

Navigation in Space (part 3)

Without a fixed point to reference like the north pole, sea level, or the north star, flying in space can be a little...disorienting. If you're in a starship traveling in space and detect another object floating out there with you, you need reference points. It was suggested to me that the nearest fixed point in space, such as a nearby star, be used to calculate X, Y, and Z coordinates. I learned from the aerospace engineer that one of the newest methods being used currently involves a typical triangulation method for position determination, similar to our GPS technology. It uses interstellar Pulsars as points of light (actually X-rays) that are emitted from the poles of pulsating Neutron stars. However, this becomes problematic when your starship transitions to an area where there is a nearer star, or a nearer set of Pulsars. Imagine the problem of trying to calculate position effectively when moving back and forth between these areas, where one star/pulsar is the nearest, then another becomes the nearest, then you fly a loop and end up nearest to the previous one. Constantly changing reference points in this situation would be confusing to the poor captain trying to call out directions to his equally confused helmsman. Imagine the difficulty of flying an RC helicopter away from you, then turning it around to fly it towards you, where suddenly many of the directions become inverted because of its new facing. All of this can become insanely confusing. That's why I turned to a friend who spent a lot of time in the belly of a Navy submarine...

Navigation in Space (part 2)

I need to address a standard in most scifi, especially in the space opera genre that Solar Echoes falls into. You've seen it hundreds of times: a captain sitting in his chair calling out to the helmsman to fly the ship this direction or that. This is a romanticized cliché that has stuck around in scifi for decades, likely popularized the most by the Star Trek series. The idea of a captain calling out orders to people working together to fly a gigantic space ship is somewhat reminiscent of a captain on the deck of a sea-faring vessel, calling out orders to his swarthy men. It's no wonder that this trope has continued in popularity over the years, and yes, I use it in Solar Echoes as well; it's fun, and it gives every player a role on the starship when playing the tabletop game. However, this is obviously a very impractical means of flying a starship. Even current technology will make all the navigational calculations and adjustments necessary without a word being said. The idea of putting your hands on some type of steering wheel or digital helm control is a concept imposed by our current, modern day experiences, but far into the future, it is very unlikely that starship navigation will look anything like that. Despite knowing all this, however, I'm sticking with the traditional captain and helmsman because...it's fun!

Navigation in Space (part 1)

One of the things I keep running into when writing about starship travel is the need for some kind of navigation system. The problem is something you might not think of initially, because we have fixed points of reference in our lives right now—there's the North Pole, sea-level, and even the North Star (Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor). When I write starship battles, however, the usual terms used for navigational reference are no longer practical. The subjects are well out into the depth of space, far away from any of these static navigational references. And, because Solar Echoes involves FTL (faster than light travel), they are often far beyond their solar systems, out in deep space. How does one make reference to where you and your enemies are during a starship dogfight? After doing a lot of reading and consulting with both a friend from the Navy (who spent a lot of time in submarines) and an aerospace engineer, I have made some progress. It's an involved discussion, but I'll do my best to share over the next few days.

Random week of updates and other stuff...

Ok, so I guess this topic isn't random since it's still concerning the visual novel game, but I've been “auditioning” artists all weekend and for the last couple days. I posted an ad in a forum on the deviantart.com website, where lots of talented artists display their work. I've had an overwhelming response, despite my requirements (such as I won't work with anyone outside the U.S. because of payment and legal issues.) There are a lot of really talented artists that are interested, but I've had to turn some of them down because either they weren't in the U.S., or their art just wasn't the right fit for John Fell's character art that I'm using. I've been taking a sample of their online art and then have pasted one of John's characters over it to get a good representation of whether or not it's a good blend. What I'd originally thought would work well (cel-shaded art) doesn't entirely fit with John's style, which is a bit of anime blended with realism. I'm still trying out different artists and am waiting to hear back from a few I've notified of my interest. It has been hard to select some artists because they don't have any art of the sort of thing I'm looking for, but I can still see potential there. Price is also a factor, as I have a limited budget for this project...though I am considering Kickstarter. If I did a Kickstarter campaign, do any of you think you'd be interested enough in the game to support it?

Random week of updates and other stuff...

This week will be a bit random with my postings, but I'll be back to normal next week with consistent topics. Today, I'm just going to mention something I've been doing regarding the progress of the Solar Echoes Visual Novel game. One thing I found essential was the ability to communicate my ideas to the others working with me on the project, and a flow-chart or “mindmap,” as some call them, was needed. I tried out different free programs, one which was called Freemind. It wasn't quite what I was looking for because it didn't allow cross-linking. I settled on the Draw program available through the free OpenOffice.org word processing software, and it's really easy to use. See the attached example I just threw together in 5 minutes. For a complex, choose-your-own-adventure visual novel like I'm planning, it was important to be able to provide visual representation of this for others, and for myself! You should have seen the crazy thing I had diagrammed on my giant dry-erase board at home. I could read it, but others had trouble reading it from the photos I sent them. This draw program will do just fine!

Your Feedback Needed for Visual Novel Game Design (part 5)

My last line of questioning involves relationships in a Visual Novel. There are going to be a lot of interesting relationships among the Solar Echoes alien characters, and how they interact with each other will be one of the core elements of the game. You'll need to navigate the different personalities and cultures to succeed at your mission, and I have a lot of ideas for how I'm going to make this fun, intriguing, and challenging! However, one aspect that is very popular in Visual Novels (and usually helps sales if present) is romantic relationships. This is a small problem in a typical Solar Echoes scenario, because even though 5 of the 7 aliens do have binary genders, only 3 of them have discernible differences between gender (and you'll only ever see a Chiraktis male—the one female is the Queen!) I also don't want to have cross-species romances going on, especially since many of the alien races are similar to animals we're familiar with. However, I do have some plans to include a few extra characters of the same species that could become romantic interests of the main character. A few final questions for you related to this topic:

1. Would you be happy with only 1 romantic option in the game, and have the option not to pursue romance at all?
2. Would you prefer 2 or more romantic options in the game?
3. What other ideas do you have for romance in the game? (Keep it PG—I'm not putting anything R-rated into this game, especially because I want it to be marketable to kids as well.)

Your Feedback Needed for Visual Novel Game Design (part 4)

I'm also considering making my own combat system for this VN, utilizing branching choices that also reference variables set along the course of the game and even variables that were set during your character design. A have a few unique tricks in mind to help make combat more interactive, and I've already successfully created a few working test programs to try out my ideas, using my VN program. However, I'd like to know how interested you would be in combat? Many VN players do not buy their VN's for combat—they are interested in the story, the characters, and sometimes in the choices they can make to alter the story trajectory. I worry that including too much combat (or including it at all) might deter some from giving the Solar Echoes Visual Novel a chance. I know that everyone has their preferences, especially since I've played with a lot of RPG gamers that have a wide range of preferences in this regard. But, I have a few related questions for you on this topic:

1. If combat was included in the VN, would you like the option to skip the player-involved combat and jump to a summary of what happened?
2. Do you like “quicktime events” where you have to click or press a specific button within a limited time-frame, or do you hate these?
3. Would you like or dislike it if, by not making a choice inside an indicated time-frame, a “Do nothing” option was defaulted to? (and this option had it's own path and consequence)

Your Feedback Needed for Visual Novel Game Design (part 3)

In addition to branching paths, another more difficult to implement detail I might add is character customization at the beginning. This might be visual only, but I am also thinking about giving players the option to make a few choices about what he or she will bring on the mission. I may even be able to allow a little skill point investment at the beginning, so you can “design” your character. This would introduce variables into the game that might affect your chances of success with your choices. For instance, if you chose not to bring any armor, but then make a combat choice instead of a diplomatic choice later in the game, it might not go well for you. And conversely, if you chose to equip your character with a suit of combat armor and then you try to speak diplomatically in a sensitive situation, it might negatively affect your chances of success—what diplomat shows up in combat armor, especially if they're asking for your trust? These are just a few ideas, but I have a few more related questions for you today:

1. Would you prefer to be able to name the protagonist, or do you find established characters more convincing and immersive?
2. Are you more interested in seeing the story unfold, or would you rather it be more like a role-playing game where your particular character design affects the story?
3. Do you like seeing through your character's eyes (POV view) or would you prefer to see your character and his expressions represented graphically onscreen with other characters?

Your Feedback Needed for Visual Novel Game Design (part 2)

One thing I've been learning about Visual Novels is there are a LOT of different types. Many are what are known as “Kinetic Novels,” which is basically just click, read, click, read, until the end of the story, where you click to advance to the next block of text while some background art and character art (known as sprites) change periodically, often with the characters changing their expressions to match the situation. I can definitely do something like a Kinetic Novel right now, hands down—I'd just need a little more background art, but the programming itself would be very easy: I'd only need to enter the text into the programming environment and pattern certain built-in scripts. However, I have all kinds of ideas and I would like to do more than that. Another aspect of VN's is the option to make choices, which departs from Kinetic Novels and becomes a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. Some programming is required, but my program will still handle it, so I'll be doing this. Considering that, my questions for you today are as follows:

1. Would you prefer a VN that has a lot of branching paths with alternate storylines and endings?
2. Would you be ok with the possibility of ending up in failure with the wrong choices and have to load up a previously saved game to try again?
3. Do you want the choices presented to be more focused on character relationships or plot events? (Both will be present of course, but I'm asking about preferred ratio)

Your Feedback Needed for Visual Novel Game Design (part 1)

I've been working on putting together details for the Solar Echoes Visual Novel game, writing out my ideas for the setting and the story. I've also been planning out each of the characters—their personalities and motives. I am now putting together event sequences for the overall story line, and I've been doing a lot of research about what others are doing in their VN games. Of course, many of my ideas may be limited by the programming, but I have a few people that have expressed interest in helping, using javascript, which is what my VN program uses for extra scripting. If you're a programmer skilled in Javascript, please message me, because there might be an opportunity for you as I'm putting together a small team. Also, if you're an artist that is good at doing background art, I definitely have a need for some scifi art backdrops, so contact me and share your art portfolio! In the meantime, I want to hear from everyone that thinks they might be interested in a game like this. I'll be putting forth some specific questions this week, and your feedback and ideas just might make it into the game!

Operation: ShoreLeave 40 (part 5)

What could have been a very tragic death was thankfully avoided when the team stopped to aid their fallen team member. They managed to stabilize him with repeated injections of medical nanites, but, because he rolled poorly regarding where the car hit him, his left leg was damaged beyond repair. The bones had been completely crushed, and the leg would soon atrophy and fall off. Thankfully, he was a Krissethi, so in several weeks' time he could regenerate the leg, but the poor guy was no longer as nimble as he once had been. Meanwhile, the characters tried to pursue the delivery truck, but two unmarked cars showed up and attacked. An intense car chase ensued, with bullets fired and a few sharp car maneuvers, but when the characters in the lead car threw out a gravity-pulse grenade at their pursuers, the explosion caused a loss of control of one of the cars and it crashed into the team's trailing car behind it. The remaining enemy managed to severely damage the other group's car—both of the teams' cars were damaged severely and they were no longer able to follow. Unfortunately, the smugglers escaped, but the team had nearly traced them to their hideout. It was an impressive mission, and the team gained 1.5 times normal experience points typically earned for this mission—almost enough to level up after only 1 game session! Sadly, I had to pack up and leave the convention at that point, so I had to end things there, but I was really impressed with how effective this team of gamers performed!

Operation: ShoreLeave 40 (part 4)

Once the team arrived on the colony planet, they saw the disguised contraband being loaded onto a delivery truck that began driving away. By displaying their Union Guard ID's, they quickly convinced a few starport security guards to allow them to borrow their squad cars, and sped off after the delivery truck. When it suspiciously broke down at the side of the road, the characters pulled over (posing as starport security) and offered to help. The engine damage seemed like possible sabotage, but a new delivery truck had been called and arrived to transfer the cargo so delivery times wouldn't be missed. During all this, the stealthy Omul on the team tried to climb under the truck but was spotted and questioned. Meanwhile, the even stealthier Krissethi character managed to sneak under the truck and camouflage his skin to blend in. The second delivery truck left with the contraband, and the characters decided to try to follow at a safe distance. However, while clinging to the underside of the truck on the road, the Krissethi had to keep making Athletics checks to hold on. It wasn't long before he failed and fell to the street, suffering serious wounds from hitting the pavement at high speed. Sadly, though, that wasn't the worst of his problems, because although the first of the following characters' cars managed to swerve and miss him, the second car behind them didn't see it coming and failed their pilot check, running over the poor Krissethi character!

Operation: ShoreLeave 40 (part 3)

The Shoreleave team of gamers had already proven themselves to be unusually skilled at their jobs, but their successes kept coming. They quickly located the hidden contraband in the smuggler's ship, they managed to meet up with the smugglers' contact without suspicion, and amazingly—a definite first for any team I've played with—they managed to complete the transfer of contraband without blowing their cover. They also cleverly managed to send their stealthy Omul along with the contraband so he could report its destination—a starliner cruise ship headed for a colony on a planet light years away. The team boarded the starliner undercover and spent some time gathering rumors and talking with various NPC's (non-player characters). They met a light-hearted, enthusiastic plant-like Erwani that was eager to visit the distant colony for “Greener Pastures,” and they learned he was a gambler who loved casinos and flavored CO2 (he's a plant, after all). They later met a nervous Archaeloid who was a cybersecurity expert sent to strengthen the colony banking systems because of past cyber-heists, and the team offered to run a test hack on his cybersecurity system to test it for flaws, hoping to encourage him that he could handle the job—they weren't able to crack it. And the team also met a shady Krissethi who asked them to keep their eyes open for a particular Erwani that owed him a great deal of money. The Krissethi explained he was a loan shark and had heard that Erwani had moved to the colony. Interestingly, the players had no qualms about pointing the Erwani out to the loan-shark, justifying it to themselves by pointing out he had an obvious gambling problem.

Operation: ShoreLeave 40 (part 2)

I ran the “Egg Drop” mission at ShoreLeave, and though I've run that same mission many times in the past, there were a lot of impressive “firsts” with this group. For instance, I've never seen a group manage to approach the smugglers with such a convincing cover story, and not only get the smugglers to allow them to board their ship peacefully, but actually pilot their ship and attach THEIR boarding umbilical between the ships when the characters missed on their first attempt. I won't tell you the impressive lie the team's Reln conjured up to fool the smugglers, but I will tell you that everyone acted their part perfectly without arousing suspicion until they managed to get themselves perfectly in position to attack. Only a couple light injuries were sustained by the team during the battle, and the smugglers lost 3 of their 5 crewmembers before the captain surrounded to the overwhelming surprise attack. That wasn't all of the surprises for the encounter, though, because after interrogating the captain for some specific information about the smuggling operation, they also thought to confiscate and hack his MPC (kind of like a smartphone). Through the MPC hack, they discovered the true details and realized the captain had lied. Yet there were still more surprises to come from this group of gamers...

Operation: ShoreLeave 40 (part 1)

Last Saturday I attended the Shoreleave 40 science fiction convention, and I started setting up my table in the game room a few minutes before they opened the doors. One enthusiastic gaming friend that was at the convention last year was all ready to play right when the doors opened at 10am, and he had brought his old character and his own Solar Echoes Player's Guide. As new players began to show up, everyone started to design their characters together as a team, planning out who would cover each skill area. This is the best way to design your character in Solar Echoes, and it's a lot of fun coordinating your character design with others on your team to make sure you can contribute for the team and also have the freedom to do things your own way. “Do we have someone skilled at driving? Who's got Biotech (medic) covered? What about a hacker, do we have someone good with Cybertech?” Everyone coordinated, and a few players that joined near the end of this process decided to grab some pre-generated characters to fill the remaining gaps. One new player in particular noticed that the team didn't have anyone particularly skilled at Persuasion, so he took the Reln wordsmith character. There aren't character classes in Solar Echoes, and each character has 7 different skills at level 1, but because there are a total of 18 skills, it will take at least 3 different characters to make sure all bases are covered. Plus, it's always good to have a back-up, because if the only driver on your team gets critically injured, you might be at a serious disadvantage in a car chase!

Shoreleave Convention Saturday! (here's part 6 of Visual Novel topic)

I intended to post this tomorrow, but I'll be at the Shoreleave Convention running Solar Echoes demo's all day! So, here's the conclusion of this week's Visual Novel topic:

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 6/6)

So, there you have it, the beginnings of a framework for a potential Solar Echoes video game: a visual novel! I expect it will be many months to a year before it is complete, but I'm starting to put the pieces in place already. Once the program is finished, I'll be exporting it so it will be playable on PC's and iOS devices, and I plan to put it up on Steam for a small price. After that, I'm hoping to get a development kit from Sony so I can possibly port it over to PSVita and maybe PS4, making it available on their PSN store. I may need to work with a few people to make that possible, because I'm not certain I have the technical savvy to do it myself, but that's something I'll worry about once I have things completed with all the bugs worked out. I have a lot of plans for this adventure, and if I can figure out how to do some of the things I'm planning, this will involve a bit more than just branching story paths. We'll see, though—I have a lot of learning to do with this software and the script it uses. Let me know what you think of all this, and if it's something you'd be interested in!

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 5/6)

In addition to the art (the visual part), I need to have some interesting writing (the novel part.) I've already written an entire novel for Solar Echoes, and I wrote everything in the video comic, so my plan is to write something big for the visual novel. I love to write and I have a lot of ideas, so I think that part of the project will just involve a lot of my time. A few final details that I haven't worked out yet, though, involve elements of a visual novel that add a lot to the experience. One is voice-acting, and I'm still debating about whether I want to do this or not. It worked out great in the video comic, and really brought that project to a higher level. But, a visual novel would involve a LOT more voice acting than my 15-minute video comic. I'm leaning away from it, one of the reasons being that a lot of visual novels are not voice-acted, and I've seen people play them on YouTube having a great time adding in their own voice acting. Traditionally, voice-acting wasn't used for this genre of game, and it has only surfaced in larger productions by big game studios for the most part. One other big consideration, though, is music, and that is going to be essential in a visual novel. I didn't have any in my video comic, but you'll find background music in almost every visual novel out there. I am a guitarist and a composer, so that helps, but writing several compositions for background music, plus getting performers to play it (or having a decent synthesizer to play it back) is going to cost a lot of time and money.

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 4/6)

Another reason I'm seriously considering working on a visual novel for Solar Echoes is because I already have a lot of “graphical assets” from my work on the video comic. Artist John Fell did a lot of great work for me, making each of the aliens come to life with different expressions. I have already talked with him about my visual novel idea, and he's excited to work with me on it. I know that I'm going to need a few more graphical assets designed for use in the project, but I feel with my current “repertoire” of assets, I can already put together something decent. I'll be aiming for better than decent, though, so it's going to involve several months of artistic work on John's part to create what I'll need. I'm also exploring options regarding background art. As you'll see in a lot of visual novels, static background art is a big part of setting up a scene, so I'm looking into having locations designed instead of using the old method I tried for the video comic. My video comic backgrounds did the job, and I spent lots of time in Photoshop making them, but I'd like to have actual artwork that matched the feel of the characters for my visual novel project. John is considering it, though his specialty is character design. We'll be toying around with ideas, and will see where to go from there.

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 3/6)

After having a better idea of what I might be capable of, I decided to look for development software. I browsed the internet a little and quickly found some recommendations. Some software out there required coding ability in Python, and though I have experience writing scripts in C++, I'm not confident that I can efficiently achieve what I'd like, especially since Python is a scripting language I'm less familiar with. I'd much rather spend my time focusing on the writing and art direction/ development. So, I read reviews and tutorials to see if the different software would do what I was envisioning, and then I downloaded one that fit. I spent all Saturday going through the tutorial and played around with it myself, using some of my own digital art to experiment. In a couple hours, I was able to write a short scenario that presented two choices, which lead to two different story paths. I changed scenes with different background art, added and removed different characters, moved the character art a little, and added in some sound effects. Thankfully my audio program supported the odd format that was required by the visual novel program. My video program does not support it, though, and even after downloading a convertor for the proper format, I'm still having video troubles. More to learn!

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 2/6)

The first step to discovering whether making a visual novel is something I could do or not was to spend some time on Saturday watching a few YouTube videos of people playing visual novels. I also downloaded a few demos onto my PSVita (my favorite little gaming console—it's portable, and has tons of games available in my favorite genre: RPG.) After watching and playing through a variety of visual novels, I understand better what my capabilities are for making one. I cannot achieve what big game studios like Aksys Games have been able to accomplish—they have amazing animation sequences, actively animated anime throughout, amazing musical scores and voice acting, and overall very high production values. It's no wonder that their visual novels are typically priced around $30 or $40 each! Zero Escape, Xblaze, 7'Scarlet, Collar X Malice, and more are just a few of the big name visual novels Aksys has developed. However, I didn't lose hope, because other popular visual novels like the twisted, controversial Doki Doki Literature Club have been immensely popular and have a much simpler, traditional approach to visual novels: minimal animation, static character art and backgrounds, lots of text, and great character development.

Solar Echoes Visual Novel? (part 1/6)

Some big news! I'm considering making a Solar Echoes Visual Novel! I absolutely love writing stories, and I've already written a full novel based on Solar Echoes (unpublished), but I really like the idea of putting a Solar Echoes story into a video game. I honestly wasn't that familiar with visual novels until recently. I have run across them in online game stores, but have never tried them because I assumed it was just clicking through pages of text with some background visuals and character art. Though that isn't far from the truth, I recently began to realize that not only are visual novels becoming more and more popular across all devices (PC's, consoles, tablets, and smartphones), they aren't that different from what I did last spring with the YouTube Solar Echoes Video Comic. Considering that I now have experience in putting something like that together and I already have a lot of the graphical assets I'd need, the next logical step for me was to consider making a Solar Echoes Visual Novel. I've always wanted Solar Echoes to be made into a video game, but because my vision for that game would involve huge costs and a very large production team with lots of experience in the industry, I need to take smaller steps at the moment and approach things that I can do. So, this last weekend, I've been exploring what it might take to put together a visual novel and make it available to you through Steam, and possibly Sony's Playstation Network store.