The video was "ok". It didn't really have a solid purpose or direction and was in the end just a rambling series of clips. I should have known that that would be the outcome from the start, but I was excited and having a good time, so it didn't bother me at the time. However, the realisation afterwards that I had spent hours on something that was never going to be useful, combined with the deep dive I had to perform into my game's lore and setting and the concentration that required left me deeply exhausted.
It's taken me weeks to get back on track afterwards, which has been a bitter pill to swallow, but now that I am back on track I'm working at a good pace again. The video was not 100% wasted time, I'm confident that later on I can make a much tighter cut using the best clips I acquired and make something really dazzling and punchy, but for now I've moved on to the characters of my game.
I started a character document with the details of all the NPCs planned for my game months ago, but progress was very very slow. I never seemed to want to write, and the illustrations for the characters were similarly stop and start. After I recovered from my self inflicted burns I focused on this character reference, planning on finishing it all. It dragged on and on, taking longer and longer than I expected. I was really not prepared for how long it would take me to invent and polish my characters. Turns out writing interesting people is hard! I did end up enjoying myself immensely though once I got the swing of it, and I'm really proud of a few of my NPCs especially.
The document as it stands is 8700 words, and describes 11 Union NPCs and 12 Arcadian NPCs. Each NPC is designed to represent a certain aspect of their faction, some good, some bad, some inbetween. They are going to be met and interacted with by the player character at different stages of the game, and provide different insights and responses. Here's what I have for one of my Union characters:
Hamish Broom
Alignment: UnionJob: Particle PhysicistLocation: Cervine TowerAppearance: Hamish is 46, tall, dark skinned, and with bad posture. He keeps himself well groomed but smokes heavily.Summary: Long long ago Hamish was born in an Unincorporated region in central Africa under a different name. The Union arrived when he was only 3 and he was soon processed and registered along with the rest of his family. While the Central AI tries to make special accommodations for families that enter the Union system “whole”, eventually they have to be fully integrated back into the regular Union system and the family unit split up. The child who would be renamed “Hamish Broom” was sent to a separate Union facility from his parents at age 11 and began his new life. Hamish was a quiet child who, although he was different to his classmates, was never bullied or exploited. He did well at his studies, and eventually fell into working as a particle physicist in one of the labs at Cervine Tower. He has been there ever since, for 4 years so far, making minor discoveries in the field of neutrino dynamics. He works closely with a lab at the antipode of Cervine Tower to do this, sending beams of neutrinos there through the earth.Interaction: Hamish is a man who is not fully Union, though he chooses to be there. He is unlike many other Union characters in that he is aware of the Arcadians and is willing to talk about them; he is curious about his ancestry and history. His skin colour makes him feel vaguely out of place, even when no one else around him seems to notice. He likes to debate with the player about the Arcadians, and whether they have the right idea for humanity's future, but ultimately cannot get over their abandonment of scientific progress. He will talk practically about his work, and admits it is not immediately “useful” but believes strongly in the cause of science for science’s sake.
And here's one of my Arcadian characters:
Timo Lahtinen
Alignment: Arcadian (Lahtinen) Job: Lahtinen patriarch / fisherLocation: Teljä homestead, surrounding terrain, Lake GoodeAppearance: Timo is a solidly built man. He is of moderate height and is generally unassuming in appearance. He is around 40 years old.Summary: Timo is a restless soul, attracted to the solitude of remote places. He left home at the age of 15 to roam the wilderness, travelling by boats he made to cross lakes and seas multiple times. Eventually his roaming concentrated on this region, which he found to be particularly beautiful. He discovered and soon fell in love with Lyyti and signed up with her father Pekka’s war party to try to get closer to her. The party was a disaster facing Union drones in great numbers. Lyyti’s father pushed the party onwards despite the casualties, until there were only three left - Pekka, Timo, and Sean Temple. As the three entered a clearing a rush of bullets tore into them - knocking them all down. Pekka demanded they rise and continue, goading Timo by calling him a coward, while Sean lay dying and Timo’s leg ached. Timo crawled to the collapsed Pekka and murdered him with a knife, then dragged himself to Sean to bandage his wounds. Horribly wounded, he made the arduous trek back to Teljä, supporting and protecting the semi-conscious sean all with a broken leg and rib. Timo told Lyyti little of the events, claiming Pekka died a hero. Lyyti was heartbroken by the death of her father but the two bonded over caring for the critically wounded Sean. Eventually Sean died without regaining consciousness and Lyyti and Timo were married soon after. They had three children, the firstborn being a son who died at age 2.Timo genuinely loves Lyyti, while Lyyti is content with him. He is very proud and protective of his two daughters, but worries they are too dependent on Lyyti to survive on their own. He avoids the more militant Arcadian groups out of fear they might hurt Paula. He continues to trek into the deep wilderness at least once a year, vanishing for months at a time to visit distant mountains or lakes. He is acutely troubled by his betrayal of Pekka and his supposed cowardice, and is secretly terrified of the Union and fighting in general.Interaction:Timo presents the player with a neutral look at the Arcadian life. He is a non-violent, unpretentious, quiet man who simply lives the way he knows. At the same time, he is strong and independent, having little interest in the opinions of others and needing nothing to be done for him. He is slow to talk to the player, but may be coaxed to talk at length if met in the wilderness.
In addition, I finished all the portraits for the Union characters, and started the Arcadian ones. Drawing the portraits was very relaxing for me, and I learnt a lot about portrait drawing as I went along, getting better by the end. I went back and touched up some older portraits as I went and refined my work.
Union character portraits
That is about all I have at the moment unfortunately. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster recently, but I'm hopefully back on track now. The next thing I'm going to do (after finishing the Arcadian portraits) will be the NPC sprites, and then some investigations into how I can make level editing easier.
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