Hi everyone and welcome to the second episode of the monthly briefing. I’m happy to bring you new insides into this month’s development.
Scripting
This month was mainly about creating scripts for the events in the level of the demo version. For this, we use a visual scripting tool called Flowgraph. This allows us to create the script necessary for the events easily and quickly test them. Right now we are in the phase of creating the scripts. Once we have them all in place we need to test them to see if they work and what bugs we need to fix. Doing this is probably one of my least favorite parts of game development. It’s a technical thing but once you have all the parts in place and you’re ready to play through the level it’s one of the most rewarding things.
Smaller Tweaks
One of the things I had to do as a level designer and scripter was to make smaller tweaks and changes. Some of them I had to do because of the scripting abilities of the engine – like changing the enemies because the original enemy we had was made as prefab and Flowgraph does not support moving the prefab – or there were new ideas I had. For example, I added light coming through the hole in the ceiling or I added new elements into the environment. The first type comes during the development when you want to make a script and you find technical limitations. The second one comes during the end of development where you’re almost done with the level or the entire game, you’re going through the game and all of the sudden got this great idea of what to add.
The Narrative
We had to also decide how are we gonna tell the story of the game. The start of the game is in 1938 which serves as a non-playable backstory. This continues with few blank spaces here and there until 1990 which is the year in which most of the playable parts will take place and there is also the year 2000 from which the story is told. This might sound a bit confusing so we needed to come up with narrative segments that would separate those periods and make them more understandable. I can’t say whether we succeded or not yet but I can name a few titles we took inspiration from when it comes to narrative. Titles such as first Mafia, Alan Wake, Bioshock, and Max Payne.
What awaits us?
After all the scripting and tweaking is done we will have to test the whole demo version, find all the bugs, and fix them which will be another un-fun part (and generally is) of the development. When the demo is complete and playable we want to contact the publisher/investors with the hope of raising funds to pay for further development of this game.
I hope you liked this episode of the monthly briefing. I write this a few hours before the deadline because I had so much work when it comes to the scripting and I do this alone. If you want to support us you can share this article, follow us on social media, or join us on our Discord server where you can meet all of those amazing people working on Akolyta!
Jan Bostl
CEO, Creative Director, Designer, Environment Artist
If you like this post or the game and would like to know more about it, the way the game is made, what is currently going on, or get to know the people behind the game you can join the Discord server where you will be able to get in touch with the Pterosoft team and find like-minded people who love horror!