November 2023 Development Log - UI Stuff, Mostly (Patreon)

Ahoy everyone! I hope you're all having a nice weekend.

It's dev log time. I have done these in the past, but it has been a while. I'm planning on doing one every month or so from now on, though, mostly because I'll have a lot of cool things to show off that I'm eager to show to people. Plus, writing about this stuff legitimately helps. It solidifies a plan in my mind, or... something like that.

These dev logs are going to be about the new game that I am making and all of the trials and tribulations and cool stuff that comes out of that. Since I've only been working on it for a couple of weeks (and not even as a focus, been writing and working on Tiny Furry World mostly) there isn't a whole lot to show off or talk about yet, so don't expect anything massively exciting or explosive... for now.

Let's get into it!

The Hungry House & 'Pointless Text'

It's been out for about three weeks now and I've had plenty of time to chew over my thoughts on The Hungry House. While I'm not going to ramble on about all of my thoughts on the project (it would take up too much of the post) I am going to touch on a few things because I think it'll lead nicely into the rest of the stuff that I want to talk about. Write about?

I'm going to be somewhat critical on myself over the next few paragraphs, so before I start doing that I do want everyone to know that I am proud of the project and incredibly happy with it overall. I am going to talk mostly about what I perceive to be the project's weaknesses though rather than rambling on about it's strengths, because I addressing these weaknesses is what I want to do in the next big game project thing, since, you know... it'll make for a better big game project thing.

The things that I dislike the most about the game is pretty much everything that's a holdover from what I was doing in Quest. Stuff like: all of the objects are on a list on the side of the screen, the room is described (mostly) with text, the gameplay is very... light, to put it nicely. More than a game really it's more of an interactive book, a pseudo-CYOA or something like that.

There's nothing wrong with this - a pseudo-CYOA feel is a vibe that I want to carry forward in the next big game project thing - but I want it to be done with less text, or at least, less non-meaningful text. To clear up what I mean by this, I'll give a few examples of what I consider to be actual meaningful text in my games. This isn't a comprehensive list or anything - just a few examples:

- Macro/Micro & Vore Scenes
- World Building
- Character Dialogue
- Interesting Item Descriptions
- Funny Gags

To give an example of non-meaningful text, let me use something from The Hungry House as an example.

Now you might be thinking: which bit of this is non-meaningful? The answer is surprisingly simple.

All of it.

This doesn't mean that it's poorly written or that it isn't interesting to read... it just means that it's kinda pointless and could be replaced by something a little more interesting and intuitive. To press this a little further...

The image that all of the text is covering up communicates everything that the prose is blathering on about already. You can see the boarded-up window, you can see the overturned furniture, you can see the moldy plates and everything else. The only thing that isn't really communicated by the image is the smell - and the fridge looks kinda shady, more like a wardrobe - but the first could be fixed by adding like, a stinky fly buzzing sound effect and the second could be fixed by modeling a better fridge.

It's a prime example of telling rather than showing. This is a holdover from Quest because, well... Quest is a program that makes text adventures... and all you can really do in a text adventure is tell your audience what's there because, well, all you have is text. Since I'm not working in Quest now, though, I can lean more into showing and do a little less telling and I think that this will lead to a better game, one that is more interesting, immersive, and rewarding to play.

In other words, I want to replace this text with gameplay. I'll go into this more later on, but, for now, just imagine that you can sweep your mouse around that image, I guess - that you can find the objects within it naturally and click on them for more information rather than just... have someone tell you that they're there.

This does not mean that I think that text is pointless. This also doesn't mean that my next game is going to be devoid of text. It doesn't even mean that it's going to have less text. I will continue to write lots of long juicy vore scenes. I will continue to write quirky item descriptions and do cutesy narration. I will continue to do reams of dialogue, both meaningful and non-meaningful. I'm a writer, so my words are both my biggest strength and my biggest passion, but as a writer you also have to know when to use 'em and when not to use them, and since we're not using Quest anymore, there's really no need to use them as a crutch.

In general, with my next game, I don't want it to feel like it's a Quest project shoved into a better engine. I want it to feel like a game that the better engine is designed around, so it's likely going to have a much different UI and feel to the whole thing gameplay-wise while retaining the writing that is very much... me I guess. I want it to feel like a breath of fresh air, like, wow this is new and refreshing but also familiar. Like when an old friend comes back from vacation and they have a whole bunch of new and exciting experiences to share with you but they're also your old friend or... something like that, anyway. This leads me into the next section of this dev blog thing, which is...

Next Game Will Have More... Game

I want the next game to feel more like a game than a pseudo-novel by, well, replacing some of the pseudo-novel stuff with gameplay opportunities instead. Again, this does not mean that I am removing all pseudo-novel elements... just the ones that are the least interesting and engaging and would be better served by gameplay. In my opinion, anyways.

I will also just be adding more 'gameplay opportunities' - whatever that means - on the whole. This will come through stuff like character customisation, more exploration/puzzles, combat, and a whole bunch of other things that I will be talking about more and more as the month's wind on and these things get fleshed out and prototyped more on my end.

It'd be pointless to talk about them now because they're not super fleshed out and far from finalized, so everything is subject to change anyway. It won't take too long to flesh stuff out... but at the same time, The Hungry House is practically fresh out of the oven and I've been doing more writing than programming so most things aren't super far along. It's only been like three weeks, so these dev logs are really going to be following stuff right from the starting blocks. This will be neat, but it also means that you'll see a lot of rough stuff over the next couple of months until stuff kinda starts to congeal together.

To tease, though, and because why not, here are a list of funny test rooms that I've been prototyping.

Today I will be showing off one of these rooms - which is RoomTest. I might show the others off in later devlogs - who knows - but I think this one gives the best example of what I mean by replacing text with gameplay. It's also the most fleshed out, so...

Anyway! Let's talk about that more in the next section.

Changing The Interface

Please note that everything in here is far from final. Like, it isn't even alpha-level stuff - it's a literal test environment that I made to test out some code I had rattling around in my head.  I'm just showing it off to give everyone a rough idea of what things might look like purely on a UI level and because it's a good example of what I've been wittering on about for the last hundred-or-so paragraphs.

Here's what RoomTest looks like when you compile all the gunk and fire it up:

Oh, look, it's a weirdly cropped room! But is it really weirdly cropped, or...

You can make it scroll around by moving the mouse to the left or the right, which reveals that it is not a poorly cropped room, rather a complete room with an extremely stretched-out back wall texture because, like I said, I'm prototyping here. I wouldn't even use these assets to be honest, they don't match together super well and really I want the next game to be a fair bit more colorful and... like I said, it's prototype stuff.

Anyway! As you can see, there are also four objects in the room. But how do we interact with these? Well the obvious thing to do would be to hover the mouse over 'em, so...

Yep, that works!

A quick note that I want to make before going on is that I'm not going to be making a game that's a pixel-hunt - as in, the game deliberately hides small objects to make them hard to find in order to make the game longer/more annoying. When this is developed more, I'll probably add something that highlights all the objects in the room with a key press or something like that.

Anyway! So if you left click on the chest, what happens?

Icons! A magnifying glass and a hand, or, a look at and a use icon. Like everything else it's placeholder and in the final thing there'd be a couple more icons and they'd look nicer, but you get the point!

So, click on the magnifying glass and:

We get a very basic description at the bottom of the screen that tells us a little more about the object, or, some useful text. What about the hand? Well, that would be used to open the chest, but...

It's locked! So is the wardrobe... and the door. When I want to test more stuff out interface-wise (what might happen when you open a chest... or a wardrobe... or a door) I'll 'unlock' them and make them do stuff and maybe even show it off in a dev log like this.

The buttons are context sensitive. You can't open a chair, so when you hover over that object, 'open' becomes:

You can sit there. This works, or, works as much as a prototype chair can!

Speaking of relaxing, I think I've shown enough here and talked about enough here, so I'm going to close this section of the dev log thing and, well, close the whole dev log thing off I guess.

Mission Statement

So, now that I've said all that stuff, I'd kinda like to distill what I'd like to do in the next game down to a something simple, which is: I want it to feel more natural. This goes for all aspects of the game, really, from the gameplay to the writing to the vore scenes themselves. I want it to feel more like a game and less like a novel shoved into a game engine. I want the gameplay to feel fun and immersive. I want the vore scenes to feel less forced and more come about by circumstance, as in, instead of walking up to a predator and asking them to eat you, you're more just thrust into a situation where it'd be natural for that predator to eat you or step on you or... whatever they're going to do, you know?

At the same time, though, the reason I'm doing these dev logs is to gather feedback and see how people think about the stuff that I'm doing, so if any of this looks or sounds off or if you just have any questions or concerns in general then feel free to voice them because I am listening. As much as I make this stuff for myself I also make it for you guys, so...

I think that will do for the first dev log! It's Sunday and I'm kinda sleepy so I'm gonna eat some dessert food and take a shower and maybe fall asleep. After the shower, not during.

Back to writing on Monday! I'll be back with some stuff soon. Until then!