Void Id out now - NoBrainerIFJam

Another game jam game!

Here it is: http://sleepyagents.itch.io/void-id

Void Id

It's an odd visual novel. The idea with this jam was to make an interactive fiction in 24 hours (but at your own pace over a month).

I actually spent about 48 hours on it in total, but to be fair half of that was creating art and sound assets, so I'm pretending that I am 2 people with the same name in hopes that counts as a team effort...

Thanks to qualifiedbadger for animations, I love how the vapours and breaths turned out.

Today is exactly a year since my first post here! I'm going to spend a little time planning my next project, which, in theory, won't be for a game jam. But chances are it will take so long to make that I'll release something for a jam before it's done!

d20 post updated, inktober and playing other VNs

Well I'll try to do a monthly post even if I don't have anything of interest to report!

I've been keeping myself fairly busy in October so far with #inktober - all of my inked drawings are getting posted on my personal twitter which is @paradigmshifty

Here's one for fun:

Inktober drawing

Also I've been playing at least 10mins of a new visual novel every day this month (a challenge suggested by @renpytom), some games have been amazing and some have randomly crashed part way through! It's great soaking up the decisions other developers have made in such an industrious way, it helps me question my own decisions.

Attention RPG fans! Hehe, just a quick note to say I have updated my popular (over one hundred page views!!) d20 in Ren'Py post : http://sleepyagents.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/day-9-variables-in-renpy-dice-roll-d20.html 

It actually has some examples now, which some may find useful.

Still doing concept work for a couple of games, I'm not going to rush into full development mode until I decide what I really want to work on! It's something I've learned from participating in a couple of game jams this year (NaNoRenO and SuNoFes) - once you start to feel a bit fatigued by the project you need something to pull you through to the end, for me that's been both the themes I wanted to explore and the impending jam deadlines!

Ren'py game filesize tips, how do you make your game smaller and Sleepy Agents Update

I've been meaning to write on this topic, and I'm sure I have, but only messily until now.

So you know a lot of people have poor internet connections, or not much hard drive space, and when they see a game available for download that's over 100mb they may stop to think twice. Also if you'd like to upload a game to the android play store that is easier when it's under 50mb as you don't need to worry about creating an expansion file (which isn't too bad, but can be an extra hurdle to some I'm sure). Edit: Google Play store now allows files up to 100mb without the need for an expansion file.

So these situations aren't exactly the only reason you'd want to make your games filesize smaller. It's generally considered good practice to trim unnecessary bloat (though on the subject of webdesign this article makes good points about keeping filesizes down http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/img-compression/ which it's easy to draw parallels with in terms of games which are distributed over the internet - pretty much all games!).

First thing to consider is the engine will already need some megabytes before you start adding assets, in the case of Ren'Py we're talking around 25-30mb. (once compressed in a zip file or similar this gets reduced to aroun 10mb) Is it possible to build a long game in ren'py in under 50mb? Well yes, but if you want to include decent quality (resolution/bitrate) music and art then it would be pretty tight. Instead just aim to trim down files that are unnecessary to the finished product.

A very quick win is to remove the files from the game directory that you don't even use! Yes these will go into the build if they are in the folder, so if they aren't in the game then remove them! There is probably a handy tool for checking for these type of files... I'll see if I can find anything. But I just check manually myself.

Now onto filetypes. You will probably want to use OGG files for audio assets, as these are smaller than MP3s for pretty much the same result. I've listened to OGG files at 320kbps and 192kbps against the WAV originals and found the quality perfectly acceptable for my games, I'd urge you to do a A/B split test to see if your ears can tell the difference if you are concerned about reducing the quality of your audio assets. There are many places you can do further reading on audio filetypes and quality (here is one example: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a-look-at-the-different-file-formats-available-part-1-audio/ ) To convert to OGG I use an online converter - http://media.io/

For images I like to use gif with 8 or 16 colours if I'm really trying to get a small file. Obviously this only works for certain assets and aesthetics. I use the Photoshop "Save to Web" export to play with my filetypes, I don't know if this is the best way but I find it has what I need. I also try to save photo's as Jpegs (sliding the compression down to find a good balance between the quality and the filesize - often around 75-85 for me). If you can get your full size images down from around 1mb to around 300kb then you'll be able to have over 3 times the assets for the same filesize at a quality that looks fine to the eye (something I should do is split tests on images using different monitors to see how they compare).

That's about it.

1. Remove unnecessary files from the game directory
2. Use Ogg for audio
3. Compress your images to find a a balance between quality and filesize

I'm sure for longer VNs and games with lots of poses, expressions, etc. there would be much more to say about being logical and not making 10 medium size files when 1 medium size and 10 small ones would accomplish the same job, but that's not something I've got much experience with.

Let me know if you have any thoughts of useful links that I can add to this post :)

Edit: This site is for reducing png filesizes: https://tinypng.com/ - I'm yet to try it out. But thanks very much to @baiyu_dev on twitter for the tip :)

And a quick update on Sleepy Agents:
Thanks for all the downloads and plays of For Ambergris. I've seen a couple of lets plays on youtube which is really amazing, I didn't think that would happen! The game now has an accessible build for anyone wanting to use the ren'py self-voicing feature or the auto-advance feature you can grab that from itch.io - http://sleepyagents.itch.io/for-ambergris
And it is on the Google play store! My first game officially released on Android, which is something I've wanted to do for years now, it feels good to have done that. (the link can be found from the itch.io page too).

What's next? Well I'm re-scripting the pizza game and hopefully will make a drive to finish that over the next few months. I'm also doing some outlines for future games (I have 3 in my mind which are all very different to each other and may or may not be released as sleepy agents games!) So I will share more information about whichever project is going to be next once I have decided!

For Ambergris #SuNoFes Out Now !

So you may be wondering if I got my game finished on time for the SuNoFes deadline...

I did! (I know, I already spoiled that in the title...)

Here is the link to download:
http://sleepyagents.itch.io/for-ambergris

For Ambergris ( A Sleepy Agents Game )

This one is a kinetic novel, there are some choices in there, but mostly these save your desicions for a possible sequel, prequel, sidequel... Sorry if that's weird or annoying!

The music is good! I did the first track and the other 5 tracks are by Urban Fox - http://urbanfox.bandcamp.com/

Let me know what you think to the story - it's just about 20 mins long if you were wondering - also what did you think to the Click-To-Continue indicator and the character thoughts dialogue box changing.

Made this with Ren'Py for the SuNoFes jam - check out the jam here: https://itch.io/jam/sunofes

It took me roughly 5 weeks, I did the writing, coding, sound fx and a lot of the art too. I used a few CC assets to help with things like backgrounds :)

All the credits are in the game but I will link to the backgrounds as they are the main resource - http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=16392 - thanks for these OokamiKasumi!

Any feedback send that to me on LSF @paradigmshifty or twitter @sleepyagents / @paradigmshifty or email if you like! hello@sleepyagents.co.uk

<3

For Ambergris - Just a random update #sunofes

- 100% Script
- 40% Editing
- 90% BGs
- 75% Sprites
- 60% Music/audio
- 90% Coding

Wow I was getting worried, but after a decent amount of progress I'm sure I can get finished on time!
Android release may be released a little later than the pc/mac/linux version as I haven't prioritised any android testing so far.

I finished a sprite today which I am happy to use for this game jam game!
I'm quite pleased with the result - I have plenty of room for improvement (I started drawing about 14 months ago, a lot still to learn!)

For Ambergris "Cassidy" Sprite

I will write about drawing and other art topics at some point in the future in case it's at all helpful!

@paradigmshifty
@sleepyagents

For Ambergris Update! #SuNoFes

I literally just this minute finished adding my script to Ren'Py - the VN game engine I'm using for my latest game, For Ambergris.

It took a while as I've been breaking a fundamental rule of good programming - DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). I've added the exact same 3 lines of code after every block of text... Given the time restraints of a jam I thought this would be easier than working out the proper solution!

So now I'd say I'm at about:

- 100% Script
- 30% Editing
- 66% BGs
- 5% Sprites
- 5% Music/audio
- 66% Coding

Here's a little Q&A I did with myself about the game:

define i = Character('Interviewer with incredibly long surname that will surely go onto two lines in the Say box if the game width is set to 800 pixels or below", color="#e0d4b6", what_slow_cps=38, what_font="LondonTwo.ttf")define p = Character('Paradigm Shifty', color="#f6beff", what_slow_cps=38, what_font="LondonTwo.ttf")

i "So, what's this ambergris game all about?"

p "It's called 'For Ambergris'. It's a short, light-mystery fantasy kinetic novel. I'm making it for the SuNoFes jam!"

i "Oh, but what's it about?"

p "Well, you play Jamie who receives an unusual invitation from an unknown source. The story goes from there. There's a weird painting, some tea drinking, it's set in London (in 2010 I think). There are a few supporting characters who you don't learn too much about. I am thinking this story may be the first of many set in a shared universe."

i "OK cool, so this game's going to have actual character sprites and dialogue and stuff?"

p "Yeah, I'd say it's much more traditional than my first game…"

i "How short is it?"

p "I think about 20 mins."

i "What is the game's purpose?"

p "Whoah that's deep. Erm. I wanted to make this for many reasons; to get writing and editing experience and Android release experience (hopefully). This will be the second game I've made nearly solo (Urban Fox is contributing some amazing music again like with my first game, New Pisces.) And I've wanted to make this VN (or, KN whatever) since I outlined the story earlier this year - it lends itself to the possibility of me making an indirect sequel with some characters and stories from old D&D campaigns I wrote! I will sometimes call it a VN (which I think implies player choices really mattering) even though at the moment it's a stand-alone KN as I would love to use the choices you make in this impact a different game set after this one!

i "Right… Why should I bother playing it again?"

p "Huh. I thought you were interested when I was talking about tea-drinking and antique furniture! It's just an interesting way to spend 20mins, reading a story with some music and art, seeing what you think of it. Well I think it's fun to read these things :) If it's more interesting than playing tetris or pong for half an hour then I'll think of it as a success!"

i "You're comparing your game to 2 household-name games there!"

p "Uh. Can I take that back?"

i "No. But did you want to say anything about the art or anything?"

p "Oh yeah, I especially want to mention that the soundtrack by Urban Fox is a great listen, check out http://urbanfox.bandcamp.com/

The art is by me, there's a mix of stuff I've made and other bits which are edits of creative commons material."

i "Is that it?"

p "It can be if you like?"

i "I think it's for the best."

Update for SuNoFes game jam - For Ambergris

Wow it's been nearly 3 months since my last post here. Although only 140 characters I do update my twitter a lot more, it is @sleepyagents

The reason for this post is really to announce my upcoming game I'm working on for SuNoFes - https://itch.io/jam/sunofes - which started today and runs for 5 weeks I believe.

The game will be called For Ambergris, unless I change the title of course.

Art for 'For Ambergris'

I really wanted to do this project to help improve my writing and editing skills in particular, as I feel they are lacking more so than other areas.

I won't say too much about the game at this point, but it is a fantasy story (it will be suitably short so that it definitely gets finished!) in which the protagonist receives an unusual invite. I'm not 100% settled on how much interactivity I'd like to have in this - I may even decide it works better as a kinetic novel.