DEVLOG #45 – Preparing For The Proofreading

Hi, Ascenderians!

Garnet’s here and now I’m preparing to send the draft of Ascender dialogues and quests for proofreading. Basically, all I have done for the narrative assets need to be checked and corrected. Grammatical, terms and phrases in English are the main issues identified from our feedbacks. I’m planning to give one of Ruby’s friend lived in Australia for some years that can speak, listen, write and read like a native English. But, there’s a job to do for me since all the narrative assets is written in excel format and without premises text, she won’t know what I mean and how the game flow with that narratives. It seems that she isn’t really a player, but I need her English skill to do the proofreading. Here is the Excel structure of my assets and converted to Words with added premises.

The Excel File

The Word File with Premises

See the differences? Yeah, I tidy it up  a little bit as well, it supposed to help the proofreader I hope. I also add some table of contents, character descriptions, prologue and ending scenes as well. Right now, I have to finish up premises that define the correlation between quests. Hopefully, with Ruby’s friend checking Ascender’s narrative drafts, our lovely game can have a better quality before it launched (I’m looking for publisher input also later on before it become the very best appropriate draft). You guys also can give suggestion with the formatting or input in the comments below.

Oh yeah, right now I’m working on new game that relate something about graves as a producer! Let’see where it goes!

Garnet is signing out from GameChanger Headquarter! Ciao!

 

 

DEVLOG #39 – GameDevs Story Literally

Hi, Ascenderians! Garnet’s here!

Well, right now Ascender almost reach the finish line, but we are still in the pit stop of a few laps to go. Polishing time before the checkered flag waved! So, I have to make my mouth shut to prevent anything spoiled. I want to share my checklist to you at this moment, the big parts before wrapping up:

• Simplifying some dialogues
• Grammar checks and corrections
• Make ups some generic NPC’s Dialogues
• Detailing the ending with artists and programmers

There’s more things has been done in past weeks. I feel so lucky that I can attend the Casual Connect event in Singapore from 17 – 19 May 2016. I have a chit chat with some story writers and learn some lessons from the story gurus. I’ve met this guy, Scott Chen, the story writer of OPUS : The Day We Found Earth, story driven telescope simulator-like game. He’s fantastic! He shared that the power of his game is the story and the gameplay authenticity. So, I asked him if he had the same struggle that I had as writer, and he’s not denying it neither agree with it, he is quite confident with his English and story concept. Lesson learned : Proof reading and dialogue fixing is one thing but having a confident in your writing is more important. His work is picked by Google Play Store as Editor’s Choice under the name of Team Signal, studio game based in Taiwan.

Scott Chen, OPUS story writer

OPUS game scene

OPUS : The Day We Found Earth

In addition, I saw another amazing story-based game called Désiré, black and white point and click adventure from France developed by Sylvain Seccia. Best Game Narrative in Indie Prize Showcase! I heard his accent and his speech when receiving the award, his not so fluent in English, I think, but still, he won! So, lesson learned : even English isn’t your first language, but go for it! You still can make the best story! No need to worry so much about it!

Best Game Narrative in Indie Prize Asia 2016

It’s been a quite remarkable story writer experience for me attending the Casual Connect Asia 2016. Last week, I also met one guy, Cipto Adiguno, the brain behind story in Celestian Tales: Old North, a classic JRPG from Indonesia who awarded as Best Game Narrative and Game of The Year in Game Developer Gathering Indonesia 2015. He’s so humble and we have quite long chit chat about being story writer and struggle delivering a lot of quests and dialogues. Lesson learned : If you find a publisher from US or UK, surely they will help you with narrative issues, but mostly you can make it in low priority because it takes a lot of effort if the number of narrative texts reach thousands. He said that player will understand what you want to deliver if you have a good basic in English.

Celestian Tales: Old North Awards

Cipto Adiguno, The Man In The Middle

No need to be so worry about that, visualization and gameplay  is the most important part, you just have to make sure the story is firmed. I’m quite agree with this as in this article said “Realizing that 95% of people won’t remember a thing you’ve written a week after playing……………. They won’t do any of the sidequests, they won’t read any of the lore, they won’t care about any of the time you spent trying to make sure.  And that’s okay.” With all these things connected, my confident is boosting up, as a newbie in game writing world, I feel proud that I can give my idea and writings in Ascender and become part of GameChanger as story writer. When I received the news about we won Best Game Narrative 2016 in Indie Game Festival Indonesia, I feel like “Really? How’s that possible? With all those grammatical errors?”, now I’m assured that I just need to continue polishing Ascender’s narrative parts and never stop learning to write an amazing game story from experienced one. Side Project: Read all those Warcraft’s tales (my book still being captive by Ruby anyway) and start to write Ascender’s  book.

Best Game Narrative in Indie Game Festival Indonesia 2016

Garnet is signing out from GameChanger Team Headquarter!

 

DEVLOG#19 – Animals Fusion : Gotta Mix’em All!!

Hi, guys! Happy new year to our beloved Ascenderians!!

Garnet’s here and I want to tell you a tale behind some animals in Ascender. So, it all begins when Amber, the conceptor of Goa’s civilization had a long discussion about what kind of animal should live in Goa. In the talk, I gave my idea that it should be combination with 2 or more animals and Amber added some suggestion to consider about food chain and underground adaptation of those animals.

Where’s the idea come from? Actually, it just flashed in my mind when I remembered about trending post in 9GAG about pokemon! As one of the pokemon gamer, I really love when some people makes fan arts about them. For you guys, who doesn’t know yet about Pokemon (I doubt it, cause at least we heard of it, right?!?) you can check their official web in here. But, here it comes the fantastic fan arts on 9GAG!!

A 9GAG Post about Pokemon Fusion

It is amazingly cool, isn’t it? So, I try to figure it out, when my idea and Amber’s concerns meet. I created the lowest level of the food chain first: The TONABA! This is the fusion of Plankton and Amoeba (primarily the ability to divide itself) that can live either in water or land. Actually, it won’t be visually seen in the game but I placed some images so you guys can imagine what it will looks like.

The Plankton + Amoeba ability to divide itself

The second layer of the animal food chain are a bug and a water creature. Okay, this time the inspiration wasn’t really came from me, the bug part came from Chalcedony in the time that he showed me this picture.

The Anchopper Illustration

So, what is this bug actually??? This is a kind of bug that can live amphibious, which is the combination between an anchovy and a grasshopper: The ANCHOPPER! They love to eat many tonabas one by one till they full , they also can eat leaves. Anchoppers can be found in many places inside Goa and yeah, they are really buggy (annoying) but birds and small animals love to eat them!

The Cattlefish Illustration

Next one comes from my authentic imagination. It’s a mix between a cattle and a cuttlefish : The CATTLEFISH! I know you must be wondering what it will looks like, it’s quite simple anyway: the shape are exactly the same  like cuttlefish but they have a pattern on their skin like a cow. Guess what, there is a lot of inks inside cuttlefish (if you grab and squeeze a cuttlefish the ink will pop out, right), but how about cattlefish?  They contain milk inside their body! So, this animal not only in the second level of food chain but it also provides the dairy need for GOA’s people! They eat tonabas all at once, anchoppers are also included.

Okay before I get too excited to write all the things in my post, I should give an end here because next our character artist, Morganite, will write about characters and animals that she already sketched and colored from my fusion idea description. Here is the clue about two animal names that Morganite already accomplished : MEOWL and GNALLO. Can you guess what’s the fusion recipe?

I’m Garnet, signing out from GameChanger’s vacation! 🙂

DEVLOG#07 – Districts in GOA

Hello Ascenderians,

It is my first time being a scriptwriter. Usually I become a producer which responsibility isn’t directly connected with the game development. The first thing I did was researching information regarding script, walkthrough and dialogue in the game. I also quickly learn about the responsibility and duty of a scriptwriter in the game.

The truth is…. Theory is always different from practice !!

It is not easy to create a story for a complex game with many elements. Not only the story, I also need to create a number of quest concepts that will be implemented in Ascender. After trying some variation of story and quest style, I almost gave up and stopped writing.

However, one day when I researched quest walkthrough of some adventure game, I truly realize the meaning of Ascender. Long story short… I take the basic meaning of Ascender and connect it with my hobby from a long time ago, which was hiking. I research several beautiful mountains in the world and look deeper on its uniqueness. I decided to use Himalaya Mountains as the main inspiration in developing cities in Goa’s civilization.

Why did I start the story development of Ascender from its cities? I did it because I believe that adventure platformer games need to have a clear and understandable world. I am also certain that by starting to develop the city with its uniqueness, it will create a clear and related quest within the world.

Goa is the civilization that is located underground. The civilization provide its power, light and water artificially. The land and ceiling structure is developed efficiently for transportation and other living facilities.

Ascender Sketch

There are eight districts in Goa’s civilization which some of the districts’ name is taken from Himalaya’s mountain area (Everest and Mustang). Everest is a holy district where the citizens do their divine ritual. Mustang is a farm and plantation area that provides food for the whole citizen.

1. DOLOPO (Central City)

It is the residential, educational and business central for all Goa’s citizen. DOLOPO name is taken from regency in East Java, Indonesia.  DOLOPO is the center where people gather and commune.

2. MAGALO (Ancient Districts)

MAGALO is the ancient civilization that provides the technology for DOLOPO. There is no historical information regarding about the city.

3. RANESH (Forging Area)

Physical and structural condition of Goa’s civilization relies on metal such as iron, aluminum and other mineral. It is also used to create various utensils for household and industry. RANESH provides a workshop to produce such tools.

4. HYMLA (Mining Areas)

As mentioned before, Goa is located underground. No wonder, there are a lot of minerals found in the area. HYMLA is the place where mineral is primarily mined because it contains the richest mineral in Goa’s civilization.

5. HELION (Techno Area)

The ancient technology used in Goa can control and maintain many facilities in Goa. It is computerized which contradicts its surrounding. HELION is comprised of servers and system maintained by technician. The area has become the backbone of the civilization.

6. RAJUMLA (Energy Area)

RAJUMLA area contains a unique mineral called onyx rune that is different from what being mined in HYMLA. Onyx rune contains special energy to support whole Goa’s activities from small daily chores to a complex task of maintaining public facilities.

That’s all from me…

 

Cheers,

Ruby