Halfwit Hero

I'm developing August sequentially, which means I've been mainly working on content from the the in media res prologue onwards. I know this won't be possible throughout the whole of the development cycle, but it's working so far.

One thing that this process has given me is time to consider how I want to visualise the narrators of the story - Charlie and Robyn. Initially, I'd gone with a anime art style for the protagonists, but the more I developed the in-game fantasy narrative, the less appropriate this felt. Most of the art in the imagined narrative takes inspiration from storybooks, animated films and the occasional videogame. To jump from an art-style dominated by Western children's illustration traditions to a sketchy, Ghibli rip-off started to feel unnecessary the more progress I made.

When we first started thinking about the scenario for August's prologue, I asked my kids who they thought should be the villain. My son (aged 4) immediately launched into a description of the beast. Here's my recollection of the planning meeting:

"He should have tentacles. And one eye. And a spear! And a furry beard! And he lives in a logpile house in the woods and is keeping Nightingale... in his tummy!"

"Wow, what should we call him?"

"GANON!"

So, here we are, introducing... Ganon apparently!

In August, part of the narrative will see Robyn calling Charlie out for being unimaginative or for wholesale ripping elements from his favourite cartoons, films and videogames and pasting them into his story. So, yes, when he finally turns up in the game, our grim kidnapper WILL at least temporarily bear the name of Link's long-time nemesis - and since my son is a huge Legend of Zelda fan, this is unlikely to be the only homage.

I'm gradually working my way to the finale of the prologue, refining the scenario a bit as I go. Artwork for two crucial scenes has been completed. The first is a path through the woods that plays host to the monster mob ambush event, and the second is the setting for the climactic encounter between August and his nemesis.

Unseen in these images are the simple animations that will give the scenery a little more life. The torches in the ambush scene include animated flames, and the moat around the logpile fort will also contain small animated ripples and waves. Soundscapes are still being used here to enhance the mis-en-scene, including bird sounds, wind and flickering flames for the torches.

Since I'm using parallax mapping with layers and custom collision mapping, it would be impractical to animate these effects using events or animations within RPG Maker MV's normal grids. As a result, I'm actually using Yanfly's Doodads plugin, which provides functionality for customising scenes during play-testing, using grid-free element placing. It's a super-powerful tool, and near-essential for anyone wanting to give their scenes a real sense of individuality - whether you're using a traditional tileset or not!

I've been giving lots of thought to the aesthetics of menu and text boxes for August as a traditional menu-driven, turn-based RPG. So far, I've landed on text boxes taking the form of torn bits of note-paper to reflect the narrators' makeshift way of documenting their improvised story.

Howdy folks! It's been a while since I posted an update on August, and I've had quite a lot of professional and personal distractions to keep me away from MV recently (preparing to switch jobs being chief among these diversions!).

I've been reacquainting myself with the complexities of eventing and autorunning while using parallax mapping, making custom animations in-engine, and utilising plugins to customise the game's interface.

I've revised the setting of the prologue of August: A Pandemic Epic.

Instead of being set during the day, with a Kingdom Hearts-esque daylight deep-dive to open the story, I've instead opted to change the setting to night time.

The prologue takes the form of Charlie narrating one of August's adventures on his own, without help from his sister. As a result the storytelling is a little less nuanced; Charlie's five-year-old mind imagines August as an infallible powerhouse who steam-rolls through enemies without a hint of challenge or drama.

The objective in this early sequence is to rescue August's lady love from a villain's fortress hideout in the woods. I decided to play up to the cliches by setting this particular rescue mission at night. I've also included here a brief transition cutscene made very basically in the course of an evening using GIMP and HitExpress to animate.