Patient 9, Entry 10, Alpha v2.35 release

This is a halfway point between new builds.  I'm currently making decent progress on generating new level assets and upgrading old levels with them.  I also made a new walking animation for the player.

The main goals of this build are

• Get feedback on the player new walk animation
• Get feedback on some of the new level assets made (only implemented up to the basement)

Things I'm still open for feedback on from my previous build

• Improve the main story by adding more dialogue and characters.
• Increase the difficulty (less items, more enemies)

I've made a decent amount of progress since my last post (the new year) but I hoped I would have made some more by this point.

Here is a download link for the executable flash file.

If that doesn't work you can use the web version (not recommended, stencyl arcade has treated me like trash).

Feedback is appreciated, feel free to leave it as comments.

Patient 9, Entry 9, Alpha v2.331 release

Wow it's been over 4 years since I made a Patient 9 post.  How time flies!  There's been significant progress for Patient 9 since my last published build (v2.262).

The main goals of this build was to:

• Improve the main story by adding more dialogue and characters.
• Increase the difficulty (less items, more enemies).

I'm pleased with the progress (even if it's taken way too long!) since the story now has a beginning, middle, and multiple endings.  It's no where near perfect but now all the core mechanics are in place and the skeleton of the story is done.  All that's left now is to upgrade the graphics, animate actors, and then do polish passes until

This is a download link for the flash file. If you don't have Flash you can find it here.

Here is the link for the web version (not recommended, stencyl arcade has treated me like trash)

Feedback is appreciated, feel free leave it as comments.

I should be doing a post pretty soon on how I've improved my workflow by breaking down tasks into very small steps and utilizing slack.

Patient 9, Entry 8, Alpha v2.262 Released

The third version of the alpha is done. You can download the newest version here or try out the web based version here, please read the info below on controls, the game doesn't present all the information properly yet.  Any feedback is appreciated, just email me or comment in the blog.

GAME INFO

If you don't have Flash just open the downloaded file in any Internet Browser.

Controls are: W, A, S, D to move, CAPS to sprint. J for talk/confirm, K to cycle through inventory, L to use.

Typewriters save your progress, just walk up to them and hit J. You can load from the title screen.

I feel really confident that the majority of the games code is stable and ready to be attacked by testers.  Unfortunately I had to put a lot of the artistic assets on hold, hopefully in a few weeks I'll be able to churn them out and get the game looking even prettier.  That's all for now, till next time.

Patient 9, Entry 7, Alpha v2.23 Released

Second version of the alpha is done. You can download the newest version here, please read the info below on controls, the game doesn't present all the information properly yet.  Any feedback is appreciated, just email me or comment in the blog.

GAME INFO

If you don't have Flash just open the downloaded file in any Internet Browser.

Controls are: W, A, S, D to move, CAPS to sprint. J for talk/confirm, K to cycle through inventory, L to use.

Typewriters save your progress, just walk up to them and hit J. You can load from the title screen.

New features

• basic player inventory
• enemies that follow the player
• minor game play changes as the player gets more mental illness'

Now that most of the game is there, my main goal for the next alpha release is the try to stabilize the code and finalize the mechanics as much as possible. From there I'll fix whatever bugs pop up and play around with the mechanics within the confines of what's currently in the game. Then I can begin adding in artistic assets to make the game not look so blocky and basic.  That's it for now, eventually I'll write something more design orientated but that'll have to wait till next time.

Patient 9 Entry 6

The first Alpha for Patient 9 is up and ready. It's a super loose rough, all part of the scrumming process I touched on in Entry 1. You can download the game here.

Game Info

If you don't have Flash just open it in any Internet Browser.

Controls are: Z for talk/confirm. Arrow keys to move.

Typerwritters save your progress, just walk up to them and hit Z.

If you give it a whirl and feel like giving me feedback here are the main questions I have for you:

- how does the game feel (in it's rough stage)

- what mechanics, if any, would you want added to diversify game play (intended length is roughly 3 hour with moderate replayability)

- do you like the proportions on the sprites? ( I moved away from the RPG Maker anime/chibi look)

Of course anything else that comes to mind is appreciated. Just comment on this blog, or email me your feedback. Thanks a lot!

Back to game talk, I noticed a huge up surge in motivation after I got the Alpha out for people to play. That was a huge perk to scrumming/iterating game builds that my class experienced in school when we made our 3d game(Legends of Goldwing), during any long creative process you start to get burnt out over a lack of results and it starts to feel like a endless sea of tasks that go no where. But when you get to see something every few months showing progress you get revitalized start getting your enthusiasm back, for a bit. Now I'm finding it way easier to brainstorm ways to improve and rebuild Patient 9, and the feedback I'm getting from my friends is critically important since I started to develop tunnel vision on what I had and not what the game should and could be.

The next alpha should be out in 1-3 weeks, the last 7 days since the Alpha's completion I've has been pretty consistent getting work done. Right now my I've got a lot of polish lined up, a basic player Inventory system, and a few more complimentary mechanics coming down the pipeline. That's all for today's post, if you've got any questions or comment feel free to post them in the comments section below or email me at alexneufeldt@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

Patient 9 Entry 5

I've got some bad news and good news.  Bad news is my internet is down aka the world is ending, that means I won't be able to easily get references or check the Stencyl forum.  Good news is I've been way more productive without it.  I've made a lot of progress after midnight, instead of mindlessly stalking Facebook or consuming Magic the Gathering content I've been getting work done.  Maybe after it goes up again I should start disconnecting it after a certain time?

I got the ..

Basic dialogue behavior working properly (fixed the collision problem)

Basic random enemy movement

Scene/level changer working (along with locked doors)

I was luckily able to get help from the Stencyl forum for the Enemy Movement for once and was able to use that advice to get the Basic Dialogue behavior working.  It's nice too start getting "code" done for the game, even if it's the basic versions, since I'm feeling way more confident and it's a lot easier to build up on a behavior than it is it get the foundation down (at least I hope so).  Right now here's my to do list, the sooner I get this done the sooner I can get a loose beta going, and then consider getting a website and starting driving traffic toward it.

TO DO LIST

Dialogue Behavior Upgrades

text that can wrap around the screen  (can be post poned, but has to get done inevitably)

track Story Game Attributes to get the appropriate message

fit multiple options and branches into the same actor instance

capability to make decisions in conversation (or at the end of conversations)

Simple Health System:  Take some amount of hits/damage and the player dies or respawns at the beginning of the level.

Enemy Attack:  When "hits" the player takes damage.

Darkness Spawner:  Spawns a black image over the player that simulates darkness

Save Game Behavior:  When you interact with a Typewritter it'll save your progress.

Sprites/Graphics:  Patient 9, 1^st Enemy, Therapist, Darkness Actor, Random Props

Title Screen: Gotta load or start a game from somewhere.

Start making the BETA!  Eeeeeeeee! :)

I'm super pumped about getting this beta up soon, may only take a week or two.  Lately I've been working on a game (mine or my buddies) everyday.  I've noticed it keeps me "in the flow" and keep it on my mind.  Another little benefit is it's a lot easier to do rough conceptualizing while commuting, which seems to take foevar! in Toronto.  I think for my next post/update I might add a little short story that'll take place before the game, something from a characters point of view.  Till next time!

Patient 9 Entry 4

Huza! The story and rough GDD (Game Design Document = the bible of the game) are "done". I say "done" cause every time I start working on any game, I keep getting more ideas which leads to segments doubling or tripling their original length.

I'm really excited about the "choose your own past" character growth mechanic. In my opinion the key to ANY decision based system is you have to add weight to each one, or else you're just presenting the illusion of choice (which honestly is acceptable at times, but that should be the spice/variety of your design, not the main course). Hopefully I'm able to keep true to that belief the further I get in development.

Schizophrenia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Sociopath are the 3 mental illness' that I'm going to use as archetypes that the player can choose for Patient 9. Each one, I hope, will have a unique play style and feel.

PTSD = fear

Schizophrenia = weird, trippy

Sociopath = power, villainous

One fact I sadly have to come to terms with is I can't cover all the possibilities and have to shelve a lot of neat ideas that I want to introduce. Some of them just lack depth, others are too similar with other branches, etc. I guess I can be happy knowing that I'm developing a bucket list of ideas that I can use in future games (of which there will be plenty).

The biggest problems for me has been

1) too many potential paths

Every possibility branch you add increases the total amount of combinations you have, which makes balancing/play testing a lot harder. More isn't more. Especially for a short indie game like Patient 9, it's better too have a few tight storylines that deliver a quality experience instead of 320984 potential storylines that all feel like the same 50 non sexy shades of grey.

2 fleshing out each archetype fully

As cool as it is to have a character idea, for the format I've chosen, I need 2 potential branches, and 2 more potential branches on top of those, resulting in a minimum of 4 variants of the original idea. This is kinda hard since some neat ideas have a bit of a lack of variety in that regard.  Also each one of those ideally should have a unique game ending option.

I designed/brainstormed the branching character growth options in spreadsheet along with the list of levels in the game.

spoilers "hidden"

In the very near future I'm going too put a design freeze on the story development, this game has got to get done as early as possible, no more durdling (doing very little). During the story crafting process I came to an opinion that I'm really liking . . .

Balance is bullshit

Seriously, if you want too create a cool experience, you cant have one be "fair" compared too the other. Take the sociopath vs the PTSD characters. One of them is a power monger potential knife wielding maniac, the other is a traumatized victim. There is no way in hell they should have the same game play feel, which leads to them being imbalanced, which I think is perfectly fine. If mechanically on a combat level they where equal, it would compromise the feel of each character.

You wouldn't feel afraid playing the PSTD character, you'd engage encounters the exact same as the sociopath. You wouldn't feel powerful or "monstrous" playing the Sociopath either, at best you'd feel like an aggressive variant.

One of my favourite space games back in the day was Colony Wars for the Playstation 1. When designing the 2 opposing factions the developers got 2 different designers and had each one make the other faction separate the other. The end result was really cool, one faction was cold steel based with saucer based designs like Star Trek, and the other faction was more based on Navy Battle Cruiser style designs with a green army tank color scheme. This approach gave each faction a very unique feel. I think for the next game I make, odds are I'll touch on branching storylines again, I might contact a creative friend after I've designed the rough story format and have em flesh out a character or two. I'm sure it'll provide some sweet contrast that'll add re playability.

Now I'm finally ready to start redesigning the behaviours and laying the rough groundwork for everything in the game. So soon and so close!

Lastly here's some doodles/sketches for potential enemies

some knife wielding lobotomy case

screamer or something

gotta love those muzzles

sketch i had too do to gain entry

Patient 9 Entry 3

It's been a while since my last post. I've had a bit of a hiccup in production, and I wound up getting in a weird little personal rut. I find this odd, since I am still coming off a very strong tournament performance in Magic: the Gathering, coming in 19^th at Grand Prix Toronto at the beginning of December (my tournament report (here's the link) was even published on a big website!). You'd think that success in one field would motivate me in another, but that sadly doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm taking personal steps to create a productive and consistent routine. I'll go into more depth in the next few entries; for now, this is where Patient 9 is at . . .

- I've got basic walking and dialogue behaviors working for the player. They're sadly extremely buggy and unpolished. I'm looking to get my programmer friend to build on the.

- A loose story has been planned out. I should research into getting some type of spreadsheet program to help deal with all the branching paths in the game. I can only imagine how hard this process was for a game like Mass Effect 3 (speaking of which, I should try to get my hands on their tools – people are very forthcoming if you just ask them).

- Most of the mechanics and the character growth are planned. The following still needs to be done:

- A bit of research into the basic archetypes of mental conditions I want to touch on (e.g. Sociopath, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychopath (VERY similar to sociopath in a lot of regards), etc.).

- Ensure that decisions made by the player add a noticeable change to the game play. For example, if you pick a homicidal killer background you’ll have access to a murder knife (that the other backgrounds don't have access too), and will be capable of going toe-to-toe with other enemies in the asylum.

- Started talking to two buddies of mine asking for their help; one is a programmer and the other a musician. Things are going slow but hopefully they'll end up coming to the dark side in order to help me finish this game. If things go well they might even write a little piece on their experiences working on Patient 9.

- Graphic assets are coming along as I continue to work on a friend’s game (producing tiles for him).

In the next few days I'll be burning the midnight oil to complete as much of the story and mechanics as I can. Things always change when you start laying down the foundation of a game. The next blog post will be at the beginning of the week, and despite having a few tournaments in the next few days I'm feeling really good about the next week. In the future I'm hoping to pump out about 2 or 3 entries per week. I plan to start ranging my topics into areas such as tutorial articles or design matters.

Patient 9 Entry 2

Welcome back. Today's entry will outline the progress I've made since my last problems I've encountered, and the current to do list.

Huzzah! I've almost completed everything from last week's list:

• SEMI CHECK – a moving actor
• CHECK – loose environment interaction like a sign to talk too
• CHECK – multiple levels that I can switch through
• CHECK – text of some sort

I made most of my progress by building off (read: copy/paste) the RPG Town and Dialog example that came with Stencyl. Sadly I'm not at the point where I can develop a behavior like that by myself in a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately there's just one problem in doing this…

Turns out the people who made this example FAKED collision between the player and actor. What they did was place a layer on top of everything and put an invisible box with collision on top of their NPC's. So the whole time I wasn't colliding with the NPC's I was colliding with that box. Then you press the action button and bam – dialogue. The frustrating thing about this is it took me literally forever to figure out, and it might turn into a limitation since I “need” the enemies to collide with the player.

Since the last post I've been on the Stencyl forum posting questions. I received replies from only one person but my problem with the town example wasn't solved until earlier today when I realized that the collision was faked. In my opinion the Stencyl community is relatively young, and small, unlike the RPG Maker community where threads get solved at a much higher rate. The lesson is at the end of the day it's you and your group that'll fix the problem; external groups are helpful but you can't rely on them entirely.

Production took a hit, as I went to 2 Magic: the Gathering tournaments that ate up most of my time/energy during the weekend, I'll be writing about that in a bit (the rough is already done). Eventually I'll be able to go to tournaments and still have the focus/energy/disciple to get something game related done, but my current routine isn't top notch..

I spent Monday through Wednesday looking up tropes, wikis, reading the Asylum World of Darkness source book (wrecking my sleep schedule for no profit), and watching Session 9 to make sure I wasn't going to miss anything cliché or obvious. I think it's really important that I did this, as it increases the odds of me hitting every note I need so that the game feels like it's in a creepy mental institution. During the “research” I got a good deal of the story down, so I'm comfortable moving forward in production.

I'm looking to get the current list done before December 7^th, if I really hustle I could even get a demo up which would sync up nicely with my attendance of Grand Prix Toronto.

• get the player collision working
  • if that doesn't work I’ll have to remake the movement system
• add a rough enemy behavior
• add a rough inventory
• find out how to track events/variables (will be used to make the story)
• make a rough list of levels/environments

The game is coming along slowly but surely. I can't wait to get a demo up for people to play! I've got the groundwork for the story done, for now I'm not going to fret over its details since I always come up with more as I make the game. If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to post ‘em in the comments or contact me at alexneufeldt@gmail.com.

Patient 9 Entry 1

Hi everyone, my name is Alex Neufeldt and I'm an amateur game designer and competitive Magic the Gathering player. This blog will chronicle my progress and tasks in dealing with video game design and Magic and quite possibly my inevitable decent into madness :P. Right now I'm currently working a part time job while I work on a horror game called Patient 9, and going to any big Magic the Gathering tournaments I can reasonably go to.

Patient 9 is a 2d top down, 32bit style horror game currently set in a mental asylum. Similar to Amnesia the Dark Descent, you can't fight enemies but instead have to evade them in some fashion. The idea is to make the enemies you encounter frightening as opposed to most action games where the monster is just another target to shoot at. Currently I'm planning on making a amnesiac blank canvas style protagonist, it'll be a masked patient that wakes up in a mental asylum which is in chaos, some type of monsters or threats will be on the loose. I'm exploring the mechanic of having the player mold the character during the game by defining his/her past, beliefs, opinions on past actions, and giving options during the story. It would look something like this:

• Traumatic past event: 1) I did it 2) I was framed 3) I don't remember anything
• Thoughts on what happened: 1) sad 2) they deserved it 3) it happened, don't feel anything
• 1-3 in game decisions: Might have special options based “what happened”
• Custom ending: it will be a collection of slides and reports that differ based on the players input and link together to make a whole ending, similar to Fallout New Vegas

That's the rough outline, it obviously needs polish but I think it's a sweet mechanic that engages the player and creates a sense of identity. Lots of things are still loose, honestly I could switch to a different setting and story in a heartbeat but for now I'm pretty pumped for this setting and story ideas I have.

I decided to make a short game like this to help me lay down a lot of the ground work for a RPG(role playing game) I want to make in the future. I remember recommending about a month ago that if you want to make a RPG from scratch I think the best method for a small group would be to break it down into a series of small mechanics like: walking, inventory, levels, battle, etc, and make a series of games, each one building on the last, so that in the end you arrive at a fully fleshed out RPG. So I went about breaking down the mechanics or things you need to have a RPG. My list looks like this:

• 1) a moving character
• 2) some type of environment interaction, e.g. picking up items, reading signs, talking to people
• 3) a inventory system, which could include equipable items
• 4) a progression system for the character, something with levels or upgrades
• 5) some type of battle system

There's a lot of other features I could have put on here, but they're rather tiny compared to the top 5 which significantly affect game play. For Patient 9 I'm definitely developing a moving character and environmental interaction. Odds are I'll add a inventory and progression system but they'll be relatively simpler than a traditional RPG, think like a dozen items, 1-2 equipables, and only a few tiers of character growth. I'm currently aiming for 6 hours or less to go through a play through of the game, depending on how the “moldable character” mechanic pans out I might lower the total game time and include some new game plus mechanics to encourage players to play through the multiple times to get more endings.

The reason I'm going with this approach of making a smaller and shorter game is I want to see results early, both for financial and confidence reasons, the difference between 0 and 1 is like true and false or day and night for an “artist”. Also I really want to get a horror story out of my brain and onto some kind of medium, it's kind of frustrating having all these ideas and not following through on any. Odds are I'm going to be releasing it as a web game since Stencyl is set up for that and it's a nice “easy” way to generate some passive add money. When I build up a bigger audience and portfolio then I'll consider selling my games by myself.

Currently I'm scrumming through Patient 9, which means I've broken the game down into smaller phases. Last week, I started going through all the help on http://www.stencyl.com/help/, just reading through all the documents and trying out most the crash course challenge's. As a slower learner I find it helps to consume as much as I can before I start working and inevitably running into problems. Now I'm on step 2 which is to make a loose prototype where I have:

• a moving actor
• loose environment interaction like a sign to talk too
• multiple levels that I can switch through
• text of some sort

The one giving me headaches is getting the player to move properly, right now it's not colliding properly and can move diagonally (unwanted). I'm going to spend a bit longer on it before I ask about it on the Stencyl forums. After I've got the loose prototype done, I'll move onto step 3, which will include the additions of primitive enemies and some type of inventory or item interaction. I expect adding enemies to be a long, alcoholism inducing process but I'm going to break it down into small steps so I'll have something to show and play sooner.

So that's the end of this post, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to post em in the comments or contact me at alexneufeldt@gmail.com. Next week I'll have some screenshots and perhaps a ultra rough prototype too show off.