BKBGames - Dev

Short and quick (stream of consciousness) update for Voiceless. We choose to go to dedicated interior maps (a la FF4-6) rather than Dragon Quest inside/outside of towns on the same map. This means almost everything had to be redone... Lots of work, but totally worth it (what do you think?).

In redoing town 1 (and dungeon 1) - we had the opportunity to make better environments to suit - what we have learned, the feel of Voiceless, and the game mechanics coming up later in the game. So - game progress got a three month set back, but now each and every location should look and feel like Voiceless (sneaking, robbing, secrets) as well as hint and teach future mechanics long before we give them to you.

Whats coming up?

Town 1 is almost redone - slow to finish due to the addition of an optional dungeon within the town - and then dungeon 1 needs a version 3 pass. We are throwing together some extra sprites for key emotions (FF6 Edgar finger wag, Kefka type laugh - that kind of art) for Foxe. Voiceless is getting its own OST and it sounds freaking awesome. After that I’m thinking heists - both the get in, steal, and get out, as well as a more social (think logic puzzle) type ordeal. And sometime February, a Kickstarter - got to pay everyone that isn't myself somehow.

Why is this one year project approaching year three?

Yup, its been a long time with no update. Good news is - Progress is still happening! See -

I archive the done column all the time (you have to trust me on that) - so that means I am finally getting more done FASTER than I find more things needing to be made done!

So why no posts? Turns out... you can only wear so many hats at once. Full time ‘real’ job, parent, spouse, hobby dev / PR / art / writer / QA / design... If I take off the PR/’Hello World’ hat, I can get more code and design stuff done. But then there is no signs of life to the outside world and no one to be interested to get me interested to work harder to get done sooner to..... Its a viscous cycle.

Still lots I want to post longer write ups on (the boons of pixel art, mechanics of being a thief, etc.) but for now... there will be more smaller things at Personal Twitter and Voiceless Twitter more often.

Until the next write-up tumblr blog (a.k.a. This thing) -

Voiceless - Be a peeping... Foxe? (Better Imgur link - curse you tumbler 5MB limit!)

See a window, look through it - any map, any time. How else would a thief learn patrolled routes, how to enter a house with no visible doors, what people think about him, and where the loot lives?

When your core JRPG team is a programmer many hat wearer and a writer, you  end up with scrapbook type menu for collecting and reading all the lore hidden throughout the world.

The idea is to provide the player with TONS of OPTIONAL notes, letters, and other sources of lore should they seek them out. If you want to dive deep into the world of Voiceless, the high dive is open and waiting. If you don’t - well, ok then. The only downside to not collecting all the lore (aside from not knowing all the cool and hard work put into each location in the world) is no achievement for you! The light blue text will be ‘header’ items - usually a location or character name and a quick summary of it and how many child text you have found / left to find, while the white items are dedicated flavor text belonging to its blue parent.

You play as a ‘master’ thief, so of course we need more stealing and of the mini-game variety. More to come soon - but the prototype theft system is alive! 

I saw the tailor for ‘the thief’ in Octopath Traveler and loved the ‘steal from townspeople’ idea (for the record, we had it before their inspiration) but the simple menu with a percent chance to steal felt so... uninspired. I’m sure it will work well for Octopath, but for Voiceless - YOU are a master thief. Not 1/8th thief, 100% steal from everything all the time thief. So - thank you Octopath for the inspiration.

In Voiceless - you can steal from everybody! Enemies, town guards, the inn keeper that charged you too much, orphans. Steal from EVERYBODY. To make this interesting, and like the real world, we have added to the tried and true percent chance to steal. Before you even get that chance, you must case your target and ID potential valuables to...  ‘rescue’ from their possession. The goal is to fill the ID progress bar to 100% - hold ‘A’ to raise the bar, and it falls on its own (like more recent fishing mini-games - and yes, we have one of those, this is A Jrpg we are making). However, hidden within the bar are one or more ‘Gates’. Should you pass a gate without breaking it, the mark will be alerted to your hand in their purse... and well, that is when the morality/guilt system will come in. How does one break a gate? Simple - keep the head of the bar near it and the gate’s HP will decrease. For those normal people out there, Yellow = safe, Orange is sketchy territory, and red means the Mounties will be coming to arrest you.

Chugging along at Voiceless. We are aiming for a Kickstarter/indiegogo next month, and wrapping up the two last non-combat systems. The development of Voiceless - especially as a hobby project - has often been like book writing; we have a kick A beginning and end, and have slowly discovered our characters and mechanics as they took us on a tour of their world. We started with some good ideas and along the way, some were lost, and better ones were found.

So - the last two: The first is a logbook containing musings (rather amateur poetry as well) of our protagonist Foxe, and the notes and lore he collects on his journey. It serves as a means to inject TONS of optional backstory and lore into our world, as well as a quick ‘what was I doing / What is next” reminder for players (I wish more games had these cuz... life happens sometimes). Foxe will update his journal/todo list as the story progresses, and the world will be littered with pages, scraps, and fragments of lore. This should keep those of you who love intricate and deep lore happy - while not forcing it down anyone’s throat (unless of course you want the associated achievements).

The second system - and most recently thought of / discovered - is a massive expansion of the ‘theft system’ we already have. We were on the fence with this one - perhaps making it a stretch goal for kickstarter so we can get done sooner - but when the game is about a Master Thief and his exploits - you got to have theft and heists center stage. So - the simple sneak behind a guard to steal their loot (a single item) now evolves into something more like Octopath Travelers small list of items and chance to steal it - plus a small mini-game to identify where steal-able items may be located on your target plus identification. On top of this, a minor morality system (which might involve overpriced shops and escape from jail sequences). (Yes this was inspired by Octopath traveler - you think with the budget they have they could have spruced up theft a bit more... so I guess we will have to).

So - diving into code I go!

I’ve been playing lots of Zelda - alttp randomizer... I think it is bleeding into Voiceless ;)

I plan on covering the 6 core mechanics of Voiceless soon (I think it is legit how simple they are yet they all play into each other - woo emergent systems) - but for now, a short update on what once was our torch system and is now our full on lighting system.

As a thief, our main character can say ‘hello darkness my old friend’ and mean it (kinda like Batman). Originally and simply - darkness is meant to invoke nostalgia for Dragon Quest 1 (minus the mane crawling to light a torch) and to limit player vision to permit level design to go crazy with mazes, hidden areas, and smaller more intricate areas.

The original Torch and Night systems succeeded in this goal, but play testing exposed a fatal flaw - When you can’t see very much.... you can’t see very much. While hampering player vision permits for some fun puzzles, one must never impede the player’s ability to see enough to know where they have been before, and where they are going/need to go. The old darkness system saw too many testers not know where to go and often double back on areas they  had already been - not good game design.

Thus... we needed an improvement.

Thus the lighting system was born! I wish VXace had better sprite/bitmap support (and shaders... love those things) - but overall, the new system is awesome. Voiceless has entered the modern era with a light system of its own (whilst staying nostalgic with those juicy pixels/grid). With this, level design can place light sources strategically - like, to show where the correct path is (the most light area), or where a secret might be hiding, or illuminating a landmark so the player knows which way is backtracking, or... to deceive the player into the wrong path ;)

Thus far, the system has given me days of enjoyment tweaking lights here and there - and I believe it makes the game look much better both in pure visuals and readability (testers thus far agree). But... its missing something...

Dithering! Yeah, that stuff. Crunchy pixels are good and all, but even back in the NES we knew and used dithering to do some cool stuff. The smoother edges even look like smoke/fog/or something. It almost feels like Courier of the Crypts now that I look at it objectively ;)

(terrible FPS due to tumbler’s odd limit... https://imgur.com/a/6k3owbn)

The plains of Glystera - known for its fertile green, meandering rivers, and natural caves and sinkholes. Might also be home to some legendary artifacts.

(yes it ends too early... silly tumblr 3MB limit...) What is a JRPG without those silly and annoying ice sliding puzzles?! Not silly or out of place here in Voiceless, for once does not simply ‘slide’ by patrolling enemies - which should change up the route task for hitting all the things until you find the correct path (I would like to encourage clear and obvious paths with Voiceless... while letting the enemy free paths (and achievements) be trickier to find).

Can’t do test driven stuff in RPGmaker... So I guess that is +2 to unity.

So - some random guy played the Voiceless demo and streamed the whole thing! Freaking awesome! He (she, it, cat?) even sent a detailed bug report to me. Critical awesome! That was the motivation I needed to stop staring at the beauties of a unity based engine and painted art.... and at least 6 months extra dev time - and to get back to work with Voiceless. 

That random streamer presented a long known bug (animations on heroes in combat not showing up / being at the left of the screen) and showed it in a new light. Three hours later (and a trip to Smiths for chocolate milk) and the three month TODO item is now DONE. I give you - the completed Voiceless combat experience. A little dragon quest with some lufia 2, and a bit of our own. I might steal some more from Lufia and have the heroes face the enemies after given a command, but I could ship it as is and be happy.

Voiceless progress this week:

Got back to work.

Fixed hero naming window bug that would let you overflow with ‘more’ characters...

Fixed 3 month standing combat animation bug

Made a animation for impale/bit hit (yay dev art!)

cleaned up terrible code written by a terrible programmer (three months ago me)

Trying for smaller more frequent progress updates (again)

Takeaway:

For you game devs out there - getting your game into other peoples hands to play is AMAZING. Even when things go bad (or crash... which it did) - the euphoria of someone else liking it... addicting stuff. Go! Get some random people that are willing to tell you if it sucks (friends and family are too kind) and play test that sucker. You’ll either get some good constructive feedback, or some fans and euphoria (or a soul crushing realization that your ‘game’ needs a face lift/defibrillator... but those odds are.... small... I hope.)

Life has been busy for the two of us over here at Fourends. I’m dealing with a recent second baby and both of us have hands full with a two-year-old (and other projects). But work on Voiceless continues on!

Most recently we’ve built a “bobbing” system---check out the gif below. Any event can have its own X and Y offsets at any time, which means our demonic monsters now float menacingly, our lilly pads gently bob in the water, terrified NPCs cower in fright, and so on and so on. This graphical addition is the same kind of subtle detail we seek out in the primary parts of the game, the writing and mechanics.

And sometimes it breaks...

But always looks awesome.

Our SquareEnix Collective campaign drawing to an end, may we turn your attention to  the best sources of new information on Voiceless: the social media accounts---our Facebook, Twitter, and itch.io (demo) pages. Or simply join the mailing list and we will update you on anything Voiceless related. Go! Follow one (or all) of them!

Combat - We want battles to feature the nail-biting difficulty of old school JRPGs, where each dungeon is a task of endurance and the player will be perpetually challenged---and immensely satisfied at the moment of victory. We also want to eschew the tediousness and RNG-ness (and, one could say, poor design) of some of those old games that usually created the tension.

Our goal is three types of combat: 1) a new encounter--in which you play it safe to learn the enemy’s moveset; 2) known encounters (the majority)--in which you must balance your limited resources (HP, MP, items, etc.) to not only defeat foes, but stay well stocked for the rest of the dungeon; 3) and the JRPG staple--enemies that are so below your skill and level that you just mash Attack until defeated. Putting enemies on the map will let you choose your encounters more strategically--we don’t want crazy fights to constantly interrupt your exploration unless you want them to, and the rewards for victory will be all the sweeter.

Our six voiceless party members start off in typical roles for the player to mix and match their own party of four--we have your typical tank, DPS, healer, and a few that are in-between. Over a few short levels of choosing particular progression paths and seeing the range that’s possible, they can be molded to fit roles of your choice, so you can play them how you want them. While some combinations are more viable from the start--we want your strategic choices and skill to be what opens the door to all (sane) combinations being viable at the end. Your more “typical” tank may start as a tank, but by endgame he could be a master of inflicting damage and nasty statuses. Or maybe you’ve doubled down on the tank role and added a retribution aura and some potent healing abilities. Or heck, he may end up a mix of both if that’s how you like it.

The enemies you’ll encounter will cycle through their attacks (a la FF1), permitting the player to exploit their patterns--once you know them. However, while balancing each encounter is not too hard a process at low levels, as your custom party of four very customized heroes grows, our job gets harder; in fact, making bosses the right amount of tougher-than-you (yet winnable) becomes a logistical nightmare as we try to account for all the possibilities. That aspect of the game design will take up more of our time than any other. So give us some time (or your own excel sheet of balanced changes and we will think about merging it in--seriously).

Besides that, we continue to play with our stealth mechanics and provide you a 5th party member: Foxe himself. He may not be under your direct control, or on the front lines of battle, but where else should a master thief be than stealing items from enemies so you don’t have to waste a turn. And should those enemies run out of items--or if you equip Foxe differently--our mouth-running master thief is also capable of dealing out some extra damage (and not just he verbal kind) or applying potions in tight situations.

Other Platforms - One of the most intriguing responses we’ve been getting from you guys is the desire to play this game on the Nintendo Switch. We want that, too! In fact we REALLY want it. Heck, we’d love to see it on the PS4 and Xbox and 3DS. And it’s highly plausible given our understanding of Unity. The unfortunate problem: it would take a lot of dev-time (a year?) to move the engine over to Unity and then an additional eternity of troubleshooting and console-debugging. While it’s certainly not out of the cards, we do want to get Voiceless out to the public as soon as possible, and a PC release first is the best way to do that (key word being “first,” not only).

But if that’s really what you fellas want---and we want it too---we will let you tell us exactly that with our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. If that campaign proves successful enough, you decide the stretch goals: 1) upgrading to 16-bit art, 2) expanding our library of music tailored specifically for this game, and 3) getting this game on the Switch. Oh, and virtual hats, always more virtual hats.

Since this is my dev blog - I do really really (triple really) want to see this game on the Switch. It might be the perfect JRPG/casual/handheld console. However, working in software development with a multi-platform product... it is terrifying how differently (and sometimes terribly) different platforms work. We could see a bug free Voiceless release to PC by early next year - and in a perfect world port to unity and release to all platforms within the next year... but the requirements for consoles are so different than PC. PCs (usualy) have lots of RAM, beefy CPUs, and error eating that let games get by easy. Consoles... you have to have it run crash free for DAYS while someone tries to break it.... I don’t want crashes, but I don’t have the time to find and fix a bug that isnt reproducable that sometimes only ever happens on a device that is 12 years old and only 3 people have... not a fun bug/witch hunt.

Optional cave dungeon - in a poisonous bog... it will be fun. It is enemy heavy, but you can sneak/skip all but one (and you can get a preemptive round on that one). Any guesses on which one is a required fight? (And yes, in game the cave will be very dark and even darker if you don’t use a torch - which you can now set to ‘auto’ in the options).

As the title says, progress for Voiceless silently marches on. There has not been much to ‘show’ recently due to: the SquareEnix Collective PR extravaganza; and - since adding a 3 month old to my party (which already had me, wife, and kid 1)... well, sleep and free time are rarer theses days.

So - what HAS happened with Voiceless you ask? We optimized the sneaking mechanics. (warning - a programmer geeking out) We started with a simple idea and mechanic - enemies can spot you or your party from a distance and will come to kill/arrest you. To give your party train of 5 a chance to sneak by, you can hold a button to enter ‘sneak mode’ in which the party will collapse down to the leader (the master thief Foxe) - now a much smaller target and moving slower - enemies will notice your movements at a reduced range. Version one say enemies ‘checking’ the party’s position each frame and with a large amount a variables passed around but never used (like the entire player party data structure). Version 2 saw all this running once every ten frames, which was long enough apart to give your CPU time to breath (i.e. run other tasks) but short enough that humans would never notice. This was all well and good... until someone announced to the twitter that they had played the demo (WOOT) but had bad lag with sneaking (booo). So - version three no longer passes data around all over the place (bad for CPU caches) and only passes what it needs. Furthermore, the check every 10 frames only happens to events that have changed direction/position. Overall, the program is doing many more simple checks to avoid doing too many costly functions. (Optimization is super cool/fun... but only when it is really needed. Stay safe kids - only optimize things that need it).

https://collective.square-enix.com/projects/450/voiceless/

Doesn’t that look awesome!? Square Enix Collective accepted our submission and now voting is open to show support for Voiceless. So - if you have been hankering for an old school JRPG but with modern lessons learned - or read this blog (most likely the same group) go and vote! Getting feedback from real humans is great for us to improve our project more, and with enough “Yes” votes the Square Enix Collective will use the powers of Square Enix (the granddaddy of JRPGs - even before that merger) twitter and other PR accounts to back out kickstarter! woo! More kickstarter means more features (like porting to Unity, the Switch, and the WORLD wa ha ha ha!).

Anyhow - with the SquareEnix thing going on, (and life) active development of Voiceless has turned to behind the scenes things - things that kinda have to be  there or people will notice and grab pitchforks - things like key re-bindings, game-pad support, and saving to “my documents” for easy save game management.

On a slightly but unrelated note - I have been reading the Riot engineering blog and a really smart guy’s rant about ignoring common sense and why that is bad. Neither is directly game dev related - but both are fun reads and have lots of game dev take-aways.