Hey, I'm back, after a 4 month hiatus. I got bogged down in college work, and never got anything done. My exams are coming up soon, so I might not be able to work on this again for a while either. I'm just posting it here so that it doesn't die.

Anyway, this is the very first version of Vespertine (which is the game's name now). It comes with a really really small test world (that looks terrible and doesn't actually have an end), and the currently undocumented level editor. There isn't much to see at the moment, but I hope that there is a lot of potential.

As said (very) previously, I am not sure where I want to take this game, so I came here for ideas. Try out the game engine, and see what you think!

Download 4.41 MB

(apologies for massive wall of text, everything I write turns out this way)

I'm back! :D

Development is proceeding slowly but surely, although I have some more problems that I'm not sure how to resolve. I would appreciate it greatly if some people could help me out on these:

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Making the game editor not require a PHD
So far, I have been trying to make the game so that as much of the game world as possible is as customisable as possible. Editors can make their own tilesets (and use up to 1000 different tilesets in a level, if they wish), create complex logic systems using a quasi-boolean algebra system, (in the future) make crazy, intricate puzzles using a wide selection of building blocks, and make hopefully awesome graphical effects using the dynamic colour palette thingy, which is a system that even I cannot understand (I swear it programmed itself).

My worry is, that no-one will be able to understand any of these crazy features. I'm thinking of releasing a super-early-totally-wip-prerelease-alpha, with no explanation, and asking volunteers to try to make a basic level, but I'm not sure if that'll tell me anything :/

Adding NPCs/critters?
I've been thinking of how to add critters to the game. I could allow editors to choose from a library of things, like Nifflas did with KS, but I'm terrible at animating, and I don't have the time to make loads and loads of things, or even come up with ideas for them DX

Also, I'm having a mental fist fight with myself whether to add NPCs of some form to the game. I like the atmosphere of you being the only person in the world, exploring the ruins of some forgotten civilisation, and I think adding NPCs would mess with that. Also, since the purpose of the game basically amounts to stealing shiny things, I don't think the locals would react very well.

However, I also think that quite a few people will be wanting to tell stories with their levels, and if there are no NPCs, and since all these stories will be smushed together into one big world (something that I am beginning to have second thought about), it could become a weird patchwork of indistinguishable stories, and everything becomes confusing and people cry and then a ninja dinosaur eats everybody T_T

Music?
I have no idea about what to do about music, sound, or ambience at all :( I have absolutely no experience or taste in music whatsoever, and I don't have any friends who would be willing to cooperate, and I doubt I would be brave enough to ask them even if I did. If anyone knows where I could find free music, or someone who could make free music, or would be willing to contribute music of their own, I will love you forever if you help me <3

Downloadable levels as well as/instead of online world?
To help fight the crazy-story-dinosaur-eating scenario outlined above, I thought about adding downloadable levels, like in KS, alongside the "patchwork" online world, but I'm not sure about this.

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That's about all for now. One again, I would be really happy for any suggestions regarding these, or anything else about the game. If you help lots (or even a bit) then you get credited, and get imaginary cookies :D

The game will be avaliable as two different versions. The plus version (which includes the 1440 room mega episode) will be a commercial product that I can put up on Steam. The standard version doesn't include this episode but is free and completely open source.

For the sake of distributing the game on as many platforms as I can, I need to treat them as two separate products (many services don't offer free games). However, the source code to the free version is fully identical to the plus version (it's the same executable).

Please tell me the 1440 version will be available off steam...

I like the idea of having to assemble a computer. It could get pretty long, though, if you choose to include all 101 keys

I would say #2, since it encourages exploration.

However, I would like to state that I find games without manual save points really annoying, since my computer is not very stable, and my electricity supplier even less so. It always seems that whenever I have made the most progress, there is a power cut, or power surge, or some other disaster. Not fun D:

It really depends how far save points are away from each other. In some games I own (no names named) it is a five minute walk/fifteen minute fight between checkpoints (savepoints were even worse), and there is no manual save.

I grew tired of these games really quickly, as I could not simply pick them up whenever I wanted, but had to plan ahead to make sure I did not have any plans for the night, and had enough charge in my UPS to last me to the next savepoint in case of a power cut.

I am the highest person with the letter M in their name! yay! 

I have been recently making an experimental Knytt Experiment-esque platformer game, which will have (assuming I finish it) a vast game world that is editable by anyone. However, I have noticed several problems with what I am planning to do, relating to how I still give level designers the freedom to create the world, but at the same time make sure that they conform to a few specifications. I was wondering, does anyone have any ideas about how to fix them? Any help would be greatly appreciated


Making sure some effort is put into the levels
Since the goal of the game is to explore and find treasure, and these treasures are probably going to be placed by other players, there is potential for someone to simply make the room a 16*1 platform, filled with treasure, in order to instantly score massive loads of points (If I add a scoring system, which I guess I will have to). I need a way of limiting how many can be placed in a certain proximity to each other, and I also want treasure to be quite rare in the game world (1/100 screens?). There will be lots of potential for making the levels look nice, and I want this to be the primary focus, not racking up as much treasure as quickly as possible.

Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX

There hopefully won't be more...

Anyway, any ideas or questions, no matter how small or large, are welcome