Saturday, April 21, 2018

Game Update! : Date Night pt. 1

Hi there, and happy Saturday!

I wanted to share an update, seeing as I don't really post on here as often as I should.

I've made 5 video games, start to finish, since this past October, and that's almost the entirety of the use of my creative juices.

Right now, I'm working on a parody dating sim called "Date Night" for my friend Michaella. A dating sim (simulator) is a game in which the player is the protagonist and gets to choose and court a character. There are dating sims available for both guys and gals, and the characters to choose from aren't always of the opposite sex, so it gives the player their choice in its entirety.

For this game, Michaella will get to name her character, and I'm thinking of giving her player options to choose from, like choosing her name and choosing her appearance, though I'm not 100% sure of how to do the latter.

I use a program called RPG Maker MV, the newest release in the RPG Maker series. Rather than controlling coding, I use the command options, like "Text Box" to insert some text to appear at a specific point. I'm self-taught, so I'm still learning how to get the events to work together and how to make the game function without errors, but I get better with every game!

Michaella's characters to choose from are: the nice Jewish lawyer, David; our friend Scott, who is ~12 years older than us and super rich but still hangs out with us for some reason; Vinnie, the handsome man who is perfect in every way but looks and behaves a lot like her dad; Don Duckson, who is basically Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, but with a slightly different appearance and his name is slightly different; and last but not least, Ricky, the LA thug who can't help but be nice to her.

The whole game takes place in a shady but affluent part of LA called the "High Houses," which don't really exist, and their name implies many things. It's just a bunch of super tall but narrow houses that seem popular with people who make about $100k a year. Drug lords operate a lot of the region, and one in particular manages the houses that Michaella's character lives in. And yes, it's Ricky.

Here's what I have so far:


It's an empty room! Thanks for noticing! This is going to be the apartment that Michaella's character lives in! I haven't even started furnishing it, and it's the only room you can see so far in the game. On the left side of the screen, you see a bunch of colorful or patterned blocks. These are the "tiles" that make up what you see in the game. I'm using SF Interior tiles for this game because the normal exterior tiles are from fantasy games without electricity and technology and that just won't work for what I'm trying to do here. I can only do this in the Mapping Mode, which is indicated in the two boxes beneath the Help option. The left side is Mapping and the right side, the red landmark point, is the Eventing Mode button. Events aren't just things that happen, but they can be switches, NPCs, objects you can move. The possibilities are endless, though sometimes cliche. But this is how I'm working on it! I've made the characters and chosen the music for the game, along with designed the main menu screen and on and on. I'll post updates as I work on this game, because I'm intending it to be very funny! It's for her, so I hope she likes it!

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