ShadowThief

So Cristine's idea for Shadow Thief is very intriguing.  I'm interested in figuring out more about how this game is going to work and what all of our roles will be.  Shadow Thief was the only game (besides mine) that I was actually interested in, so I'm glad that I ended up on that team.

Before the pitch

We are now just an hour before we have to pitch.

It does make me a little nervous, but at least we already did it once before.

Our prototype is looking a lot better and actually seems to work pretty well.

I added a few short scenes to our animation that show what happens if you fail to rip an enemy apart, as well as a few little puzzles.  Not much left to do but wait and then pitch.

Are you kidding me?

Come on, Roger. "Princess on the Rag?" I bet less than 1% of the class have even heard of that saying.  You old people and your weird sayings, ruining my title =)

But seriously, I had heard the term "on the rag" before (but only from older generations), however I'd never heard the saying with the "princess" at the beginning.  Now--unless I want to make it a coming of age story =)--I guess I have to change the name. But the question is, what else do I call it?

I liked the title "The Rag Princess" because of its simplicity. The first two words are only one syllable each, and the word "Princess" kinda gives it a fairytale feel.

I don't want to use Roger's suggestion of "The Patchwork Princess" because the word "Rag" is kind of important thematically for the story I want to tell (I've been working on this story for years).

I could just call it "The Ragdoll Princess" but that extra syllable takes away from the simplicity of the title. If I want simplicity, I could just call it "Rags" or something. But then I'd lose the "princess" and possibly some of the fairytale feel.

It might be good for me to give a quick synopsis of the story.  On the surface, the story is about a new girl (Ana) at an orphanage (back in the early 1900s) who gets bullied by all of the other kids.  The meanest and oldest of the girls at the orphanage locks Ana in the cellar.  Ana's only real friend, her ragdoll, comes to life and then has to search through rooms in the orphanage to find clues about where the key to the cellar is hidden.  Each room is like a level in the game (with puzzles, enemies, and a boss), and each room leads the Ragdoll closer to where the key is hidden.

Another interesting thing to note is that all of the orphans call themselves princesses, they all own one doll, and they have a sort of pecking order.  The leader of the orphans owns a porcelain doll, and because she owns the best doll, she outranks everyone else. Whoever has the worst doll is the lowest in their hierarchy.  That's why Ana is bullied so much because of her Ragdoll.

Each room/level (there'll be like 3 or 4--whatever we have time for) has a theme based on which princess owns that room.  The boss of the Paper Princess's room is a paper doll, the boss of the Puppet Princess's room is a marionette, etc. Upon beating the boss, that princess will tell you a vital piece of information about where they think the key is hidden and let you progress to the next room.  Each room allows you to learn a little bit about that orphan's troubled past (this is done in a way that won't interrupt gameplay, similar to the game Psychonauts, where you can learn about each character's past while your inside their brain). Ultimately you learn much more about Ana's traumatic past.

My favorite games (like the Silent Hill series, Rule of Rose, or Fatal Frame) have ambiguous stories that can be interpreted in different ways.  I want this game to be similar.  You can take the story at face value, that Ana's Ragdoll really does magically come to life and save her.  Or everything could be imagined up by Ana as a type of fairytale fantasy, and as a way for her to at least mentally escape a bad situation.

Right now, I guess I'm leaning toward "The Ragdoll Princess" hopefully that's different enough that older generations won't start giggling hysterically.

The programmers are working on the prototype, and it seems to be coming along pretty well.  They're having lots of issues (that I can't really help them solve) but I hope we have something rudimentary by next tuesday.


I've been supplying them with art assets as needed, but they haven't gotten stuff working well enough yet to really worry about putting actual art in. Also, we didn't really want to have too much art in there so as not to distract from the actual core concept of gameplay.  So in the mean time I have been working on things we could show for our pitch (like if we have a powerpoint presentation).


I've created an animation that features the core concept that I want to be present in our game.  I was thinking we could use this video in our pitch.  And even if we don't, I think it's a good aid to help the other members of the team visualize who this game could work when finished.


Here's the video:

Work on prototype

Work is continuing on our Prototype.  Things seem to be going well on the programming side (though to be honest I don't understand much of what the programmers are doing).

I'm working on art for the prototype along with some images and possibly animations to use in the next pitch.  Here's hoping we get everything done in time.

Got Picked

I am glad my game made the cut.  Now onto making the prototype.

The hardest part is going to be getting that string to work.

For art assets, obviously I don't want to go all out since it's a prototype, and much of this art will be thrown out. I liked both of Roger's methods for doing art.  The one method where you use just placeholder concept stuff, but on one or two parts you do have some good art to show what the game will look like.  I also like the other method too where you just try out lots of different styles to try to get a style that you like.   I might do the second one just cuz I think that the style will be important to this game, and I'd like to be able to figure out what kind of look will work best.

Game voting

I just did the voting thingy for homework three.

I can't remember all the ones I voted for, but I just wanted to write down some of them here.

1. My Rag Princesss game
2. Cristine's Shadow Thief games
3. Alice's Beer Pong Challenge (not really my type of game, but her pitch was good, so she get's spot 3)
4. The Cat with a Squirrel on top game
5. The Hat game

I don't remember the rest. Oh well. I do hope mine makes it considering I spent a lot of the summer making assets for it and planning out a lot of the gameplay aspects of it.  Either way though, it'll be fun to see how these next two semesters go.