#notssgame

This dev log is a casual discussion of how and why I've evolved my #indiedev game focus from tRS (2014-2018) to #NotSSGame (2018-202X).

When I started developing my video games in earnest, with the advent of my combining Blender with Playmaker and Unity, my main project for experimentation was tRS. About 3 years of casual development went into the tRS experience, starting in October 2014, before I shifted to NotSS development in about June 2018. tRS game and NotSS take place in the same narrative universe (almost all of my stories do), and production focus has shifted to NotSS for now for a couple of reasons. One cool note is that I've already incorporated the environments and story of tRS into an arc of NotSS, which makes for a more compelling narrative angle for tRS overall, than the previous less-focused iteration of tRS. While developing tRS, I found myself more interested in a few of its levels, and those levels, along with an RPG Maker game I made in 2009, is what finally cohered into NotSS around June 2018. There are even more considerations as well that have led to the shift toward #NotSSgame.

As far as dev challenges for the original VR iteration of tRS, the friction of developing using a VR headset every day meant I tended to avoid work more often. This is exacerbated by the way Oculus spams your desktop with their store page every time you turn on the headset, and it HAS to stay in your taskbar or you can't use the headset. Which pisses me off every time and puts me in a bad mood unsuitable for creative stamina. Like I said; friction. The other*r big aspect is that my computer is not technically good enough to run VR, which means my frame rates can get lower than is ideal for development, bumming me out and making me nauseated. I DO, however, still sculpt the landcapes for my games first in Oculus Medium because there's nothing else quite like having such a child-like lego sandbox available in terms of creativity with instant feedback. Alternatively I use Blender's newer Dyntopo mode since I can also wander around in 1st person in Blender itself using SHIFT+~.

In addition to the extra friction of developing in VR, the visceral power of VR can put your focus in specific areas and make you think an experience is more substantive than it really is, which bogs down development. Simply, because I'm so visual, being in a visually-impressive environment entertains me way more than it should, even without gameplay. tRS is largely environment porn at this point with little gameplay "drive" to back it up, and I could release it TOMORROW as a "walk around these cool environments" VR experience. That immersion is very important but not enough on its own to remain compelling for long. And because it's in VR, 3D modeling needs to be more precise and detailed than when working on regular 2D 3D games, and shaders need to be more tailored. Nowadays I model all my assets in Blender in a "scaled" way, getting good reference images and good dimensions numbers from google, since this makes my assets "vr-proof", though I model them at a lower-poly level than i used to, since now I'm working on a huge open world that ideally could run on a mobile VR headset, which means I need to be more economical than when I was developing for desktop VR.

So these are some of the reasons developing in 2D (I mean, NON-VR 3D.. uh, flat screen?) is better than developing in VR, at least at this stage. I am planning for VR by modeling things to scale to begin with, and it's always something I consider - trying to ensure that adding VR support will be easy - and that creates interesting development challenges. For example: how do you create cinematic cut scenes in VR? You could do the "stay in first-person and have Half Life 2-style cut scenes" thing, but what if I want crane shots and sweeping camera movements? How do you do that in VR without guaranteeing sickness? In Resident Evil 7, they just slap the cut scenes onto a 2d virtual monitor in front of you. I don't like that, either. Solving these challenges adds an extra challenge layer to development when I need to be focused on getting the core interactive game experience solid, so while I'm thinking about those VR challenges, they aren't the area of primary focus at this stage. No Man's Sky is probably one of the best VR experiences out there because they focused on making a solid and full game first before adding the VR Layer, so if the first time you play that game is in VR, you will be TOTALLY blown away. (Until the limitations of the game's design itself become apparent, but that's a separate issue, and they keep adding awesome content to that game, so who knows.) And Resident Evil 4 VR is another great example - it was an excellent game FIRST, then the VR layer is icing.

From a design and economics standpoint it's also just really smart to ensure that people without VR, and even without a gamepad, can comfortably play the game (without friction). Making sure it works well WITHOUT VR and is fun and satisfying will make it even more amazing when VR support is added.

Once I realized I can develop most gameplay systems without using VR and can integrate the VR later, NotSS became a perfect candidate for this since the goal is to have a gameplay scripting system that serves most of my needs for any further interactive software experiences (ISE?). ISEs are traditionally called "video games", but the Star Trek Holodeck is far more my guiding light than, say, Pac-Man is, and based on TNG and Voyager Holodeck episodes, I'd not call those games but "interactive software experiences". I wish there was some better word than 'games', and I'm stil waiting for someone to come up with it, so for now I just say ISE or game. I'm really brain-zapped from how game dev has stagnated in a lot of ways and how the true power of this stuff is still untapped. AI will unlock convincing people within a decade or so, but even apart from that there is still free design ground to improve, and I want to do it.

Another big reason for shifting development to NotSS is that NotSS is a more coherent experience that feels more "driven" than the more ambient, experimental tRS. Whereas NotSS is a singular experience, tRS is actually about 45 unique short game scenarios and is a larger undertaking because its needs, characters, and stories are more varied. tRS's varied experiences are a result of my needing to jump around to avoid getting bored with any particular scenario and are a way for me to explore and uncover my ideal game genres and mechanics. NotSS is the current iteration of that experimentation, and I can tell I'm on the right trick because I almost NEVER get burnt out on creating NotSS, and it's designed such that when I get sick of 3d modeling, I can work on Playmaker scripting, or I can develop characters or dialogue. NotSS is EXACTLY the kind of game I wish existed but doesn't, so now it's going to, but it will take time. There's always SOMETHING I'm excited to work on, some problem I'm excited to solve.

Overall the idea of playing a finished NotSS is really exciting and more compelling than the idea of playing a finished tRS, and as I've said, tRS has now been incorporated narratively and physically into NotSS, so we still get all the benefits of its development.

The big difference between NotSS and tRS is that tRS on its own would be an amazing virtual reality game. NotSS, if I can just complete it, will be a revolutionary video game unlike anything I've ever played that has the potential to shift the way many game mechanics are developed for games, while simultaneously hitting the sweet spot in several under-saturated game genres. I really want another Earthbound and another Majora's Mask, so why not combine them? If I can pull it off, that is.

I've been working on my game #NotSSGame about 3.5 years now, and I just got a world map draft done that I'm happy with, so I'm gathering ref images to make hundreds of props now in Blender. I'm studying Bethesda's Creation Kit as reference for how to name and organize all the 3d models (props PRP, entities ENT, setpieces STP, structures STR, landscapes LND, vehicles VEH, etc. is my own naming scheme I'm using), and I'm prepping to make hundreds of character models using AI generated portraits I created on Artbreeder. I've done tests, and I can drop them into Character Creator 3 with the Headshot plugin (CC3+HS totals about $600), and it uses AI to automatically generate rigged game ready character models with like 56 blend shape facial expressions, at a really high AAA fidelity - these character models even have a tearline in the eyes, which gives a lot of believability. To pay a professional to do 1 character at this quality would take like 3 weeks and hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, I've read. It's a new age now for low-budget storytellers.

So here's a screenshot from Blender of my world map and a picture of a character face I generated in CC3 (the entire body is generated, with good topology, too, and rigged, not just the face). Before snapping this image I easily posed her face in a way to give the impression of a subtle emotion, and it works really well. Character Creator 3 is expensive but very worth it as a game dev tool. I won't be using this AAA quality of characters probably since my style will be a bit more low poly and painterly, but being able to auto generate entire character bodies and faces in a few clicks, is an awesome start that I can use as a base or that I can use as reference for creating my own models from scratch later on. Also here's an image of the portraits folder of my characters. That "yearbook" image is a sample of the 2000 or so character faces I've generated and tweaked using Artbreeder. And also here are pictures of setpieces I made for my game (tv on stand, and porch swing).