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136

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 16, 2015, 08:27:07 AM »

It's surprisingly versatile when it comes to what you can do in it. Some recent examples would be Gunpoint, Hotline Miami and Spelunky.

137

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 15, 2015, 03:15:26 AM »

It's made using game maker. But everything on top of that engine I've coded by hand.

138

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 13, 2015, 03:15:39 PM »

I like the idea of people coming and reviewing it. ;-)

139

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 12, 2015, 04:26:30 PM »

Lol. Is that a thing? Salt makes people thirsty, so they drink more??

By the way, the new domain for the game site is up and running at www.innkeepgame.com. There is a new fairly lengthy post on there about recent developments in my thinking on what the game will be. The long and the short of it is that I'm pretty excited! I'm pushing much further now towards a persistent world outside your inn, which itself acts as a kind of window where you both help steer the fate of the adventurers passing through, and see the results (and hopefully reap the rewards) of your actions when they come back from their adventures. Tweets guests will have a lot more significance in being connected to events that have actually (well, virtually) happened to them on their travels or personally generated histories.

140

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 03, 2015, 01:45:48 PM »

Time for dev diary #6.


== Major Features ==

- There is now an icon system for guest needs. Right now that means simply drinking, but later could include food and shelter. When a guest doesn't have a drink, an icon will appear at the top of the screen. Icons slide along and stack on each other properly. This system allows you to immediately have the information you need about how many people need serving. You can also find out which icon represents which guest by mousing over it, which makes that guest become highlighted.

- There is now a barmaid. When idling she will walk around the tavern sweeping. She will also collect empty tankards from the tables and return them to the shelf for you.

- Guests will now smoke pipes sometimes. Each smoker is adding to the total amount of smoke in the room. As the amount increases clouds of pipe smoke will increase in number and become more visible, wafting about. By the end of a busy night the inn might become quite smokey.

- Guests now actually sit down instead of standing next to their tables. Perhaps not a "major feature" from a gameplay perspective, but required a significant amount of work integrating/adapting sprites properly with the tables and benches when sitting. It wasn't enough simply to make the guest sprites shorter.


== Minor Changes ==

- The glove cursor is now drawn to GUI, so it goes -over- GUI elements like a good glove cursor should.
 
- There is now a cellar door. That goes nowhere....

- Added a circular glow effect to the candles.

- Added a proper debugging mode that I can switch on and off, making various cheat buttons active for spawning things and changing different variables.

141

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: May 03, 2015, 01:34:30 PM »

Thanks. ;-)

There will be. Although I'm still working out the details, the current plan is for the quality of the drink to be important. Some guests will pay more for high quality drinks. However, there is the quality of the "brand", and the -actual- quality. There might be some discrepancy because water somehow *cough* got mixed in at some stage. Goodness me. If a guest is pretty sloshed they might not notice at all.

142

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: April 30, 2015, 10:59:52 AM »

Cheers! And thanks for following on Twitter.

143

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Re: Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: April 30, 2015, 10:57:00 AM »

Thank you!  I had a good think about it for a couple of weeks in December when I was considering attempting to make something (I've written about this here). The Innkeeper idea stuck with me because it seemed like a great way to keep things simple on the design front while still allowing for lots of variety. It's the kind of game I'd like to play myself if somebody else was making it. Hopefully I'll have something ready for alpha testing in a few months.

144

Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley / Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

« on: April 30, 2015, 10:30:49 AM »

Hi all! I'm working on a micro-CRPG / sim called Innkeep. It's a bit of Ultima 7 style classic CRPG, meets a modern day-by-day narrative survival sim like This War of Mine, with thematic ideas taken from Les Miserables (think, the crafty master of the house character, Thenarndier).

Basically, I wanted to try and capture elements of what I like about CRPGs (narrative progression, interesting characters, the feeling of being in a world), but with a static location. The idea I had was to have a game set in that classic RPG location, the humble inn, where you are the one wearing the apron, and the people of the world come to you. You serve them food and drink. You tell them about recent rumors, and maybe share a joke or two. You hire bards to play music and keep everybody having a good time until late. And then you rob them. In their sleep. A little bit...

The game will have some light sim elements. You need to manage your stock of food, drink, firewood and candles. There is serving to be done, and you will need to do a bit of "creative" cooking. But the core focus of the game is really about "looking after" your guests. In the evening while serving, you are on the lookout for identifying which guests you want to try and steal from in the night. You need to eavesdrop on conversations, observe them at a distance, and use your silver tongue to try and wheedle out some clues. Once you have your mark, then, in the dead of night you can let yourself into their room, prying open backpacks, wiggling rings from fingers, slipping chains from necks. If you have done your job properly, they should be far too drunk to notice a thing. And with that extra cash you can keep this show on the road, despite the difficulties of wartime scarcity. The idea is not to force you to play a mustached villain, but to have a bit of fun, and at the same time to try and push you towards having to make choices about who you will or will not rob, and why (a bit like with Papers Please).

Ever since I started part time work on the project a few years back I've kept track of my progress via dev diary videos on youtube. Maybe check out an early video to see where I was starting from (like, can-use MS Paint but don't know what a layer is computer drawing skills), and drop in on the most recent video to see where things stand today. It can help you get a sense of how far I've come, and what kind of game it is shaping up to be. Then if you are on twitter, consider giving me a follow. I also have a site for the game here, (although I'm still in the process of upgrading it so it might be missing a few links). I'll keep an active eye on this thread so I can answer any questions you might have, but I also have a discord channel if you want to chat more directly. Finally, you can learn more about ongoing development and get access to extra stuff like music tracks (by John Halpart) at the Patreon page.

Cheers!

Daniel

145

The Welcome Hall - Start Here! / Hi guys.

« on: April 30, 2015, 10:24:22 AM »

A few weeks back an admin from these forums contacted me on Twitter and suggested I make a thread over here about the game I'm developing. It's taken me some time to get round to it, but here I am.

My name is Daniel, and I'm currently working on a game called Innkeep! in my spare time. I've been an avid PC gamer for some 16 years starting with playing stuff like Magic Carpet, Outpost and Ultima Underworld on my friends 486 dx. Baldurs Gate I & II and the original Fallouts were kind of a golden age of gaming for me. Then I started to find my way back again when I discovered Dwarf Fortress in 2008, got on Steam in 2010, and gradually started following more and more indie titles in development. The last couple of years have been a blast. So many great indie titles. Gunpoint in particular though was what finally pushed me to start making something in game maker as well.

I've always been fascinated with games. That dovetailed pretty well with being introduced to Tolkien when I was only about six or so. You can imagine that my little brain nearly exploded when I saw MB's board game Heroes Quest for the first time.  I must have played it hundreds of times. When my friends and I got bored of the scenarios I'd invent new ones for us to play. I did something similar with little choose-your-own adventures. Later on I mucked around with game design as a teenager back in the 90s using Quick Basic and did quite a bit of work on a text-based adventure / RPG where you were a detective. It had a night/day cycle, hunger, transport around the city via taxi with talkative drivers, all kinds of amazing stuff that nobody ever saw. But I lost all the copies I had of it... Heh. Ah well. From 1998-2004 or so I also did some building on a Wheel of Time MUD. I guess that establishes my nerd credentials. These days I'm working as a translator/interpreter for an animation studio in Tokyo. But I hope to be returning to teaching/research in a less crowded place in the near future.