A Setback with the Master Sleuth Edition of Pageturner 2

So there's one little problem with trying to get Pageturner 2 a proper, full release as the game I always wanted it to be. For some inane reason Scratch's offline editor also has a megabyte limit of 50mbs. Now why there's a limit when you're hosting the files on your own server is beyond me. This wasn't true for the old version of Scratch, as flawed as it was.

Until this problem is rectified, there will not be a Master Sleuth version of the game. The good news is that there doesn't really have to be. I recently implemented a much more optimized version of the dialogue box and cut the project down by five megabytes, which will leave just enough headroom for me to finish the project with reasonable gloss and polish.

The bad news is that, due to filesize cuts, the music tracks will be shorter, and therefore loop more and drive more people crazy. It can't really be avoided.

Anyway, to further tie you over until the big release, here are a few pre-production notes I dug up from back when I was developing the first game. By the way: spoilers! Don't read these notes if you haven't played the first game.

Enjoy!

-- LockedOn.

Pageturner Updates!

 

So, a new update is in order. I've been working on Pageturner 2: Not Home for this past week and something has started to become increasingly obvious. This game is going to be too big to fit on Scratch's website. Yes, 50 megabytes was simply not enough for the huge amount of content in this game.

So the question is, what will I do?

In the past, I've offered demos with full downloadable versions. However, that's usually only confused people who think that the demo is the full game. Also, the amount of people who end up playing the full version is usually less than the amount who play the demo. That's just not right.

Another option is to split the game into two parts, but of course, that has its own problems. For one, though the game is big, it's not that long, (though it does have a ton of re-playability thanks to all the usual secrets and hidden stuff I put in it), so splitting it into two parts might feel odd. Second, my guess is that this will, again, confuse people further. If, for instance, the second part gets featured or something and not the first, that could cause problems. Locking the second part off to people who haven't played the first part might discourage people from trying the game to begin with. I've been there, it's a lot of work to search up the first part of a game, and that work will restrict the overall number of people who end up enjoying my content.

So what I've decided to do is this. Pageturner 2: Not Home will come in two editions:

THE GUMSHOE EDITION

&

THE MASTER SLEUTH EDITION.

The Gumshoe Edition is essentially a stripped-down version of the game, with less images and less overall content. The entire story will still be there, and I'm keeping things like secrets, but certain story details will be missing and there will be less cutscenes in general.

The Master Sleuth Edition is a downloadable version of the game, decked out in all the bells and whistles I can muster. My original plan for investigating the crime scenes will be implemented: basically a 3D environment that you can rotate and zoom in on to search for evidence. This edition will also have more sprite costumes to liven up the dialogue, include things like cutscene animation, and have longer music tracks and just more music in general. It will be the best possible version of the game.

Hopefully, the Gumshoe Edition will be enough to satisfy people who can't download the Master Sleuth Edition. I think there's definitely enough cool stuff in it to do so.

In other news, since Pageturner: Something Other has finally been announced, it now has its own page in the comic section. Look out for more news soon — I want the release to tie into Pageturner: Not Home's release.

-- LockedOn.

Generation Quest 2.0: FULL REPORT!

This won't be in the final game! Things got a bit out of hand during the writing process.

Anyway, here's your first look at the new Maztar. As you can see if you look in the sprites section, the Evolver Razer hasn't been 2.0ed yet. Actually none of the Razers have, redesigning them has been the hardest part of this new version for me.

For a few moments, I was seriously considering redoing this whole game again. There's so many cool ideas I had. I covered my real time battle system experiment before. Speaking of, I'm going to release that on my test account, and see if anyone can do anything about that. That's one of the surprises I'm going to be unleashing on New Year's Eve. The other one's a surprise.

One of the things I thought about doing was a tactical turn-based battle system.

An early prototype.

 This system would replace every fight in Generation Quest. I wrote up a bunch of rules:

**************

GQ TACTICAL COMBAT:

12 squared board.
“Territory” is 6 squares on each side.

General Rules:
You take turns, alternating between you and the enemy. The person to go first is randomly selected.

Every turn, you can move a piece one space in any direction and decide how each piece is going to attack or defend.

You decide on how much health points and attack points the pieces have before you play, but the standard is 100 HP, 10 AP.

You have three pieces. Each piece has two different methods of attacking that relate to whatever weapon the piece carries and how it uses it.

The Redirector/Shield
The redirector carries a forcefield that can be set to redirect or defend against the enemy’s attack.
REDIRECT:
Reflects any enemy attack and sends it back at the enemy.
Pros: Turns the redirector, a defensive piece, into an attacking piece.
Cons: Using “redirect” makes the TR/S piece take 50% of damage from the enemy.
SHIELD:
Cancels out any enemy attack that hits it.
Pros: Deflects any enemy attack that round.
Cons: There is no way to attack with it.
Positioning: Direct. You have to be within the line of fire to give or take damage from the enemy.

The Soldier/Sniper
The TSS piece carries a gun that can fire mini lasers or one big laser.
SOLDIER:
An automatic weapon attack.
Pros: Fires a continuous line of fire.
Cons: If placed behind another one of your pieces, it will not reach the enemy. It is also not that strong of an attack.
SNIPER:
Snipes the enemy.
Pros: Can target any of the enemy’s pieces, from anywhere on the board. A powerful attack.
Cons: Limited. Can only be used every time an enemy piece is killed. Also, it will never deal a finishing blow, even if an enemy’s health is down and under normal circumstances an attack would kill it.
Positioning: Direct/Free. You have to be within the line of fire to give or take damage from the enemy, but if you are in “Sniper” mode you can be anywhere on the board to give damage.

The Slammer/Friend
This piece carries a spiked shield and a plug.
SLAMMER:
Runs straight into enemy territory and slams into an enemy piece, then quickly makes a retreat.
Pros: A direct attack that deals quite a bit of damage.
Cons: Vulnerable from behind during the attack. Can’t be behind another player piece when attack begins.
FRIEND:
The enemy you slammed into will now be controlled by you.
Pros: The enemy never will fire on their own piece. Depending on which piece you ran into, your attack could be very powerful.
Cons: Only lasts a turn. Can’t move any of your own pieces during the turn, so if they aren’t properly defended the enemy could wipe you out.

Endgame Condition:
When every enemy piece is gone, you win.
When that happens:

MINI-BOSS FIGHT(This would be a real-time combat scenario much like my battle system experiment mentioned earlier).

You get to fight the mini-boss using your weapons. Some bosses are weaker against certain attacks. All bosses can dodge. Some like the “Splitting Razer” and the “Evolving Razer” have special moves that break up the fight.
At the end, you get awesome treasure to spend in the shop!

**************

I planned all of this while sort of already knowing that it was way over my head to code. It still needs some polishing, but if someone wants to make a board game out of it, go right ahead. I have half a mind to do so myself. If I ever do, I'll be sure to put it in my Downloads page.

Another cool idea I had was to release little bits of a completely new version of the game, and then combine them all into one game. This way, I'd be releasing stuff but it'd be new stuff. Then again, if I did that, why not go all the way and come up with a new, better game? I would, but I have too much on my plate. Until I clean that plate, I'm going to stick to my scheduled releases.

Until next time!
-- LockedOn.

The Evolving World Part 4 - New Screenshots and Posters

That's a behind the scenes picture of the last released screenshot for TEWP4!

For the past few days, I've been animating TEWP4's third scene, which is one of the longest scenes in it. I'm very happy to say that the animation work on the third scene is now complete. The fourth episode is now two minutes and twenty seconds, which already makes it longer then the first part. But it doesn't stop there. There are thirteen scenes in all, and the final script is six and a half pages, which means that's about as long as the final short will be in minutes. That makes me about a third of the way done, which is great. If you didn't know already, I've been composing music and adding sound effects as I go, instead of waiting until all the animation is done. The reason for this is that it lets me tweak it as much as possible during production.

How close will this short be to the previous shorts? There's a theme, and the old episodes didn't have one. I also moved the title of the episode until after the theme instead of before. I no longer stick a LockedOn watermark on it. However, there will still be a credits sequence and an after credits sequence, so make sure to wait until the credits have stopped rolling. Coming up soon in my scene roster is the sneak peek that plays at the end of the credits of Part 3. I'll be recreating the old scene, which is going to be really fun.

For suffering through all this text, you get a reward: TWO new screenshots of TEWP4!

From left to right: Rorret, Reath, Knore, Arrdo, Miles and Smith

Oliver enters the secret headquarters of Humans in Hiding!

There you go!

Keep your eyes open on my YouTube and Vimeo channels for a teaser of some sort soon...

Oh, and check the Wallpapers and Posters section of the blog to see some new character posters!

Did you know I have a bandcamp page? No? Well, you may have spotted it among the site links on my YouTube channel page, but in case you didn't here it is!

LockedOn Soundtracks

It's full of stuff that you can't hear anywhere else, like two extended The Evolving World theme songs, and other exclusive content like a Pageturner album and the soundtrack to the revised versions of TEW Parts 1, 2 and 3. On top of all that, each song has a separate song artwork!

In case you haven't been keeping up on my Scratch page, Pageturner is now being split into four games, each with one mystery each. That makes it a little easier on me, and it moves the release date up for you!

Keep your eyes open for more updates and posts, or you could just follow the blog by email, check the sidebar for the handy gadget that lets you do so!

-- LockedOn.

TEWP4 - First Look

This screenshot is from the first scene of the new TEW short. Hopefully this will establish the tone I'm trying to set, as well as showing how the lighting and backgrounds are handled.

I'm working on a linear schedule, which means that I animate Scene 1 before Scene 2, and I'll be animating shots linearly as well. Sometimes in animation they schedule the hard scenes before the easy ones so that as the deadline is approaching they'll have completed all the hard shots first. It's a good idea, but I want to be sure that if I'm half way done animating, that means I've animated half of the project, instead of having animated several shots.

There are a few other things that I've decided. In order for this short to be completed, I need to be personally invested in the project. If I'm just doing it for the fans of the series, then I may rely on positive fan feedback more then what would best serve the story. I'm making this because I want to make it. I'm going to work hard on it and try to finish a project that in the end I'll be proud of.

A few more things:

I'm still working on Pageturner, I'm just waiting for Scratch to develop on offline version because the new Scratch is really hard to work with.

I made a new page for LockedOn Animations! Check it out in the page bar under the header!

And that's all for now. I may release one or two more images, but not TOO many that it'll spoil it.

-- LockedOn.

The Evolving World - Update 5

The Evolving World, Part 2 is almost complete! That means it's time for a Behind the Scenes Special!

In the upcoming TEW,P2 Arrdo tells his backstory! However, it may surprise you to know that it isn't the first Backstory I had in mind! In the original, it showed Arrdo as a lanky teenager, getting challenged by eight year old Oliver. I have the pleasure today of showing you what got scrapped!

"A long time ago, I had a great deal going. I would pay for robotic weapons and mechanical parts..."

"Then I would sell them at a waaay higher price then I got them for..."

"Everything was perfect..."

"Until you told me what I was doing was wrong, and challenged me to a fight right there on the spot."

"Being defeated by an eight year old crushed me completely. I went out of town for a few years, building my empire in a place I knew you would never go to. "

That's as far as it got, and I for one am glad. It doesn't make sense that Arrdo would carry that kind of a grudge, or go so far out of the way just to defeat someone that young.

Well, I hope you enjoy TEW,P2 when it comes out!
Check this blog for further updates!

-- LockedOn.