Team Meeting 5: Part One

Previously, we had a brief team meeting with James in which we went over the art bible, quests, narrative and environment layout. James suggested that the art bible should explain the reasons behind the deer’s colour choices and told us to begin thinking about scale in regards to the environment layout. Additionally, he suggested that the quests should have false solutions that lead to certain consequences to make the gameplay more interesting. As a result, we decided to ponder the concept of adding false solutions as well as deciding how main interactions will occur and what the dialogues will be.

False Solutions

We already had false solutions for the plant quest, the crystal cave quest, the fog quest and somewhat for the snake quest (the player barks at the skunk without wearing the seaweed) and the rhino quest (the player plays the tune wrong). Therefore, we felt no need to add in special items to create more false solutions. In each ‘giving’ quest, there is a chance the player will give the wrong item – this can be regarded as a false solution. We had decided early on that we didn’t wish for there to be any player death in the game as we wished for it to be an exploratory game rather than a challenging or frustrating game. As a result, none of the consequences of getting the puzzles wrong are dire.

Interactions

Flies Quest
Player talks to spider
Player gives spider wrong item
Player gives spider right item
Spider gives player flies

Hidden Area Quest
Player can pick up shell – perhaps change the turtle shell to something else? something with multiple purposes? like a leaf? – it could be used as a false solution item for the fog quest

Snake Quest
Interact with snake – it hisses at the player
Interact with the skunk initially – looks at player
Bark at skunk initially – jumps but keeps hiding
Interact with skunk after seaweed – looks at player and freezes
Bark at skunk after seaweed – emits smell and runs away

Fog Quest
Interact with wind plant initially – groans and stomach growls
Feed/give plant wrong thing – spits it out
Interact with plant after quest completion – blows wind at player

Plant Quest
Interact with sakura initially – deer rips one of its petals off
Interact with sakura again – carries it in mouth – player can place it down
Interact with swamp – animation – creature moves & creates air bubbles
Walk past swamp – creature spits goo at player
Interact with waterfall after quest activation – obtain eroded sticks
Player can pick up normal sticks throughout the game
Player can take spikes and replace them with eroded sticks
Player can combine spikes with sakura

Bird Quest
Interact with bird – it flies and lands on deer’s back

Crystal Cave Quest
Interact with crystals initially – they flicker
Interact with crystals after quest completion – glowing animation

Addition – Quest Reward (narrative):
The crystals light up to reveal a crevice in the wall
The deer can go through it to find a dead, mutated creature that looks like it ate the crystals and morphed to be part crystal – this is the reason for the crystals being dim

Rhino Quest
Interact with rhino – it snorts and releases steam in anger
Interact with grave – deer bows before it
Interact with bell flowers – deer headbutts them

Mushroom Farm Quest
Interact with six special mushrooms throughout the game – collect them
Interact with empty plot of land – replant collected mushrooms
Interact with first small animal – tries to eat empty land – it is sad

Afterwards, we decided to categorise the interactive assets by whether they can be collected, talked to or other. The resulting interactive assets table can found in Interactive Assets List 1.0.

Dialogue

We decided that the there would only be two animals the player would need to talk to – the frog and the spider. We initially created the dialogue based on the assumption that there would be no dialogue options for the player as we weren’t sure if it was possible to include them easily in the code. Therefore, we could need to ask Bernardo if he thought it was feasible to add dialogue options to the game – dialogue options would offer the player more freedom in how they can find out more about the characters and the world. However, the concept of possibly having dialogue options in the game didn’t occur to us at the time. It only occurred to me later that day whilst I was writing up the dialogue in a neater format, which spurred me onto creating some dialogue options based on the dialogue we had created during the meeting in case we get an okay from Bernardo in the next meeting.

Whilst discussing dialogue in the meeting, we decided to begin by separating the dialogue into different sections for each animal to make it easier to cover all ground. After creating separating the dialogue into sections, we proceeded to fill in each one with dialogue. Shown below are the different sections accompanied by their respective dialogue.

FROG
Frog dialogue at the start – “Hey! You! I’m hungry over here! Get me some flies! … What? You want something for that? *turns around* I can help you get up there.”
Frog dialogue if player gives wrong item during flies quest – “Do I look like a barbarian who eats just anything lying around?! Humph!”
Frog dialogue if player gives them flies – “Took you long enough.” *slurps* “Oh, you wanted to go up there! Oh, well, I’d need more energy to get up there – specifically the floral kind.”
Frog dialogue if player gives wrong item during plant quest – “Hahaha! Do you think me a fool?!”
Frog dialogue if player gives them the correct fake flower – “Oh…you…did it. Well…thank you, I guess. Come here, now. I’ll get you up there.”
Frog dialogue if the player tries to kill them – “What are you doing? I have friends in high places, you know! … Wait! What about my son!”
Frog dialogue as they’re dying – “Oh no! I’m going to croak!”

SPIDER
Spider dialogue at the first interaction – “Is the tiger gone? The world is so dark and bleak. I wish I had something to cheer me up. Something pretty…”
Spider dialogue if player gives the wrong item – “That’s nice…but…the prettiest things appear in spring.”
Spider dialogue if player gives them the sakura – “Oh! It’s beautiful! Thank you for cheering me up! Here, have these as thanks from me.”

At home, I decided to make dialogue options for the player and created additional dialogue to accommodate these new options – this was made as a potential alternative to the dialogue we created during the meeting. The alternative dialogue can be found in Dialogue 1.0.