Libretto Dev

The First Ever BreadBox is here!

What the heck is a “BreadBox”?

BreadBox is the name for a collaborative week-long jam, in a combined effort from the BreadUp community, a discord server hosted by @wunkolo. BreadBox is administrated by both myself, “Libretto”, and Malevolence, another mod.

Participants have one week to create something relevant to the voted on theme, and their submission can be ANYTHING, as long as it is redistributable in some form. More rules can be found on our Discord channel over at: https://discord.gg/VdEANt2

Once a particular BreadBox is over, all submissions are collected and piled into a repository, to be downloaded and shared with anyone and everyone!

This BreadBox had 9 entries, all of which are worth taking a look at.

The theme was “Glitch” this time ‘round, and you can take a look at all the entries over here!

DOWNLOAD JANUARY’S BREADBOX!

Very quiet, lately. But, of course, I am not dead, and neither is THF.

The reason?

I have found a job! In game development!

I won’t disclose any details right now, but it’s all very exciting.

What does this mean for The Hunted Few?

Currently, The Hunted Few won’t be able to meet its end-of-year deadline.

To that effect, The Hunted Few is having its release date pushed to Mid Summer, 2017.

That’s a good, appreciable distance from now, allowing me to focus on getting to grips with my new job, and allowing for free time to work on both this current job and my personal projects.

Will that work out? Who knows! Point is, it’s a delay, and will allow me to release a product I feel is slightly more finished and polished.

Underneath: Nervous

Palms: Sweaty

12:00 AM

12:00 AM plus Broken Shore

Snowpocalypse Cowboys.

Sure!Now let me preface this by saying I have had a mildly positive outlook on NMS throughout its entire development. I thought the simplest concept they were trying to push was the most interesting for me; Using procgen tech to create a universe of mystery and exploration. That’s all I wanted from it, and I made to sure to take note of when the devs were being vague or when systems weren’t elaborated upon.

No Man’s Sky is a product of our age, I feel. Where the push behind indie games has become this sort of primal creation pool where games can surpass the quality that a AAA company can put out. Or at least, that’s what gamer culture has bred it to be.

When I said NMS is the conceptual opposite of Undertale in terms of release, what I was referring to was how hyping can affect outlook and overall success.

Hype is born from mystery, fueled by theories, and locked in by interest. When you don’t deliver on hype, it absolutely eviscerates the title’s approval in most cases.

Undertale started off small and unknown, which is honestly probably for the best. The hype for Undertale came after its release, which meant it was regulated and contained. The people who were pushing it knew exactly why they were pushing it. (Of course, it eventually came to a point where everyone was talking about “A little indie game called Undertale”, and people got sick of it, but that’s for another time.)No Man’s Sky however, made one simple promise; A universe of procgen planets to discover and explore, with a path to carve through it. Little else was elaborated upon. It was created by a small indie team, who promised something technologically impressive, with a sort of wander-whimsy attached.

But then a whole mess of things happened; The Hello Games flood, which pushed back development a ton. The delays, which ignited animosity in people who wanted to play the game. Sony’s backing of the game, and the launch date separations, along with patch-divergent versions of the game and absolute explosion of the NMS Servers.

The struggle to get to the game made it seem so much more significant than it actually was. That struggle, coupled with the hype, probably caused the game to crumple inward on itself in the public eye. Every cynic could point and laugh, and every person on the fence would feel uneasy. Even some diehard fans would redirect their hate, because they feel like they were lied to or hurt.

I guarantee you, if NMS announced 6 months before release, and quietly released on Steam with little fanfare and then let fans do the talking, it wouldn’t have the absolutely abysmal review scores and public opinion it has right now.

Hype + Significance of Struggle + Time = Disaster.

I’m one of the peeps who kept their hype levels regulated in this whole debacle.

Might do a first impressions + review later on, as well as a commentary on the whole situation.

I’m not dead! I promise!

While working my way back to programming hardcore and focusing on THF, I also have been taking more Narrative writing courses in school.

I did however force myself to do some things this week, however small;

- Debugged the Network code causing player positions to flicker.

- Updated the player physics, esp. for handling when a player character is on an edge (up til now, with enough finessing, a player could end up getting permastuck on ledges and edges.)

- Minor UI tweaks for the Script-created Inventory system (It scales with resolution now!)

- Reworked player movement to make it as snappy and responsive as possible without making visual movement look odd.

I’m flattered you think that i’m an askable authority on this type of thing!

I entirely understand what you mean; I’ve actually been in a rut for a little while now regarding the world of The Hunted Few, but I do have a strategy for adding onto the world when the ideas and passion start to dry up.

Often times in worldbuilding, it’s not the grandiose settings and the interesting rules of reality that grab (and hold) people’s interest; It’s the collection of miniature stories and interconnected nature of a rich world that makes people invested. This is the skill of a great writer and worldbuilder. Not to make an interesting premise for a world (though that’s part of it), or to write out in detail the 1000 ways government is handled (though impressive), but to answer questions and provide captivating plot threads and conflicts for those who are interested to follow. To make the world breathe. One mistake I’ve made is creating a world that is static, and doesn’t have any outstanding crises or plots by characters that are in motion.

The premise is the sell. The actual stories of the characters that inhabit that world are the investment. If I had to go with a very basic example of this kind of philosophy in action, it’d be Overwatch, or any other game where story is not one of the core focuses. The premise and mechanics of this world are straight-forward and simple (Humans vs Robots, Private Military Protectors, etc) but what really draws people deep is how they can connect the story of Symmetra to Lucio, as a surface example. 

In Dark Souls, a story/lore HEAVY game, there is indeed tons of exposition on the world that is lived in, but most of the time it’s presented in a way that drives players to think about that tidbit in relation to their plot progression, or a realization about a character.

So when you start to lose interest and your passion for the world that you’re building, but still want to work on it, try going down a different path. Try asking what-ifs in your universe, and see if you can tell genuinely intriguing stories within the mega-story that is the world you’re crafting. Leave questions open, maybe for yourself to answer later as a writer, or intentionally unanswered so it draws readers to invest.

If I were to reference my own work, I’ve left some frayed threads of plots open, in the hopes that some would pick up on them. I’ve introduced strange behaviors in characters that could require some investigation. Of course, THF as a world is brimming with mystery, so that’s the way I approach the worldbuilding.