Conviction Chronicles blog post #6 - Tutorial + Hangouts + temp trailer

 Temp trailer: https://youtu.be/eOWQkqN9pnY

Why make a temp trailer

/v/3 expo needed something and I would rather have something there than nothing. A trailer and an in game intro, which I would like to have, needs actual story event scenes to be done to be used for it for teasing, which cannot really be done at the moment. It's a parody of Zero Escape's first two game's intros but done worse.

I didn't even have a real song made for it yet, so the song used is repetitive. 

Tutorial

This is a forced tutorial at the start of the game where it runs down the basics of planning a murder with crafting/combat/airvents/fake trial. 

The main thing the tutorial teaches how the player does things will impact the end result. With combat the player can use a crafted knife to attack or not, and they are forced to put it in another character's storage box. Mainly since how the character the player murders in combat dies, if a knife is used or not, determines the trial outcome. 

Main Menu

Might need a different song, but it uses silhouettes of the cast in a restaurant. I had to simplify the background due to this, but I think it looks good so far. 

Romance

Once a player maxes out someone and they get the Key of Love, they can take them to the Love Hotel room to romance them. The scene here is very short, but it's more setting up future gameplay interactions. The romance can be broken if either goes against each other. I have to figure out the best way to handle it in Trials too. But I'll add an extra scene or two at the end of the game if both are still alive and still in a romance. 

Hangouts

So the Parlor/Pool/Library/Music Room/Gaming Room needed more content. Mainly since I was thinking about other games with how they do hangouts and I realized something: 

The good ones have layers to them. What I mean by this is a hangout is much better when you select a choice and you get input of some kind with something unexpected.

Many games will have: Selection -> Text -> Maybe a meaningless choice -> End.

But the best ones have: Selection -> Text -> Input that is maybe meaningless -> Possibility for more -> If so, then player can select -> A secondary event -> Input -> End.

Before most of mine were: Selection -> text/maybe input -> end.

Also the pool has swimsuits for everybody now. For some reason only Victor's model worked with having a bare chested model for his swimsuit while the rest of the guys have tight shirts on. The swimsuits are made to be in character but also having some sort of sex appeal. Bianca has her own swimsuit and swimsuit events, but only if the player talks to her at night while she is still alive.

Now:

Parlor: Selection -> See how everybody else in the room is doing -> Possibility of someone asking you for money to gamble -> Input -> random solution if they keep it or share or lose -> Player plays -> player can repeat playing -> end.

Pool: Selection -> Random person talks to you in the room -> Swimming text -> chance for someone to want to talk -> Can select to or not -> Smaller text -> Text based on who they are and what you are as a small chance -> End.

Library: Selection -> View others finding a book -> Chance for someone to want to talk -> Can select to or not. -> Discuss some random book ->Player reads -> end.

Music Room: Selection -> View others playing music -> Chance for someone to want to play with you -> Can select to or not -> Playing music with them ->player plays alone -> end

Gaming Room: Selection -> View others playing a game (this impacts who has the high score) -> Chance for someone who wants to challenge you -> Can select or not -> Randomized game out of 5 to play -> This is basically a game of the best of 5 games of rock/paper/scissors. The AI Chooses a strong and a weak selection out of 3. The player must select one. One gives a tie, win, or loss. This continues for 5 times until a winner is chosen or a tie is made. -> Player plays -> High score name is shown -> end 

Choosing to do another event will allow the other AIs to do stuff in the background and it costs an extra energy to do. 

This might seem like overkill, but the game is made to play it multiple times and to do events like these multiple times, they needed something extra. 

This is also why the free time events with others directly have more going on than others.

Affinity Animation

So far there is only one, not sure if I should make a negative one or not. But I'll handle it when I get to the trials.

But basically I took inspiration from the persona affinity note animations where a note pops out and flies away. I did this with a heart and I gave it eyes as it does this. I used the same kind of stars as well, even though I cannot do a glow effect with the animation editor.

This doesn't show how much you have gotten farther with the character or not, but shows you gotten slightly closer. This is mostly since I'm lazy to make multiple of the same animation. 

Anything else?

Sadly wasn't able to upload the current build to itch, so it's outdated. I have to focus on editing some smaller things and fixing some smaller bugs before doing the intro.

But I've got to do the intro next. I think having a force protag choice at the start for the first playthrough would be good, with it being more guided to ease the player in, since there are already so many different gameplay mechanics at play here that it might be overwhelming if randomly dropping them into the main game. I might even do what 100 line does with a short prologue to ease the player into the game with a smaller prison area and a smaller cast before showing off the full cast. I think Tina would be the best since she has no memories and was designed to be based on a traditional MC from the game's I'm taking inspiration from. 

The onboarding process is extremely important, so I don't want to do anything to mess it up with overloading the player too much. There is a lot to figure out with it to make it good.