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Somewhere. an exploration game by oleomingus.

Post news Report RSS Crafting Somewhere 16

Environments for figments. Creating our last alpha build.

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In the corners of my room
lie some stories seldom told.

They hide within the wooden grain
in the rosewood planks of old.

And when my house will wither
When It’s wooden beams are rotten,

There will be whispers in it’s corners
of some stories long forgotten.

Hello! Thank you for your wonderful response to our early alpha build, Rituals. Since it's release we have reworked the build to try some drastic variation to how stealth and dialogues work. Somewhere is the enactment of an intricate story, and with Rituals several elements seemed to obfuscate the nuances in our narrative of a story.

The removal of stealth is the most overt change. It simplifies character interaction, and makes transitions amongst characters frequent. But aside from Stealth the most violent change the build has
undergone is the reconstruction of how dialogues work.

Figments, is most intricate construction yet. It is a murder mystery that explores self perpetuating narratives. A investigation of the creation and proliferation of myths within the absurd search for the mythical city of storytellers.

With figments we are trying out a strange kind of branching dialogue system, allowing some movement within a rather convoluted story. It works by spawning 'nodes'. Each conversation spawns persistent nodes, that then nudge the conversation in particular often drastically different directions. These nodes are usually characters or locations within the game and nudging conversions towards specific nodes will interpret the story in very specific ways. It is a system of folding stories, a fractal of dialogues.

Each conversation spawns nodes that remain relevant for subsequent conversation within the same act. So if you happen to be talking to someone and you dialogue spawns a node " Calcutta " you can nudge the conversation towards Calcutta and the dialogue will then pivot towards a discussion of that city.

Most interestingly, these nodes do not reveal the conversation you are likely to have, only the tendency of a conversation, So while you might be hoping to talk about Calcutta the city, the character you inhabit, might simply launch upon a lengthy description of how he is related to the governor of Calcutta.

These are work in progress images, the grass especially needs significant refinement!


Rock Paper Shotgun

Rock Paper Shotgun 2

Kill Screen

Kill Screen Interview

Intel Interview

Indiegames

Built in Unity ( indie ) and Crafted in Sketchup ( make ).


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