(D.N.D.) I'm dynamite.

This is the first quest, giving the players a brief introduction to the world of BlackStar, and also introducing them to the first NPC, Sepret.

PART 1: THE REQUEST/THE COMMAND

The adventure begins in the Triple Point Tavern, a low-key human district establishment.

Using the Human District Map (Southwest), place enemies in spaces indicated. The party will begin in the tavern (8).

With the adventurers in the bar, read:

It’s evening as the party enters the Triple Point tavern, where an odd aura hangs heavily around several drinking figures. The one at the far end of the bar is an older reptilian hybrid (Sepret), as evidenced by a bits of visible tail and greying scales. Behind the bar, the bartender is mechanically washing clean steins, only pausing briefly to fulfill the the duties of his office in punctuated clockwork motions.

At a table not far away, the two ales are accompanied by two Eldarian Guards, loudly and mirthily drinking with incongruous stone-faced expressions and tone. Their conversation suddenly becomes pointed upon the sudden discovery of the reptilian figure at the bar. The flat mockery is ignored but not unheard, and the lizard’s hands shake with fear, age, and now anger. Even as the Eldarians stand at his sides, upset his drink and spit flat Eldarin profanities at his cheek, Sepret shows stoic restraint. It’s only as the Eldarians turn to leave, the reptile let’s loose a single word just loud enough to be heard: children.

The Eldarians freeze, their senses returning, beginning with fury, as they reach for their swords. Sepret’s eyes race to anyone who will meet his glance as he pleads for a bystander’s aide.

Have each party member roll a Intelligence check, DC 17 for Psionics and DC 20 for non-Psionics.

If players are successful, read:

The ground is starting to shake. You reach out for the bar but it’s still and you realize the rumbling is a voice. It’s growing louder and it feels as though the ground could tear open. Neither Eldarian seem to notice it, and it’s impossible to discern whether Sepret hears it: it’s either the two indignant Eldarians or the sound of the world shattering which has shook him to his core. Nothing of this world, of this universe, or of this reality could be making it, and it certainly could not belong to Sepret, yet more than anyone else there, Sepret lies at its epicenter.

The voice’s language is bizarre and unintelligible, yet the meaning unmistakable: open.

So the players now see the lingering racial tensions. Additionally, they have met Sepret, and see he's an old man who can barely fend for himself.

DEVELOPMENTS

The guards are drunk and disoriented, and thus have a disadvantage in initiative. Their first priority is the adventurers, and will only target Sepret should there be no-one left to protect him.

Sepret isn't giving out too much information. Most of it doesn't matter, Sepret doesn't have to be the one who tells them everything about the artefact.

ROLEPLAYING SEPRET

Sepret is an elderly reptilian hybrid; his hands shake in anxiety, and only minorly in age.

Hello. “My name is Sepret. I’m sorry to have dragged you into this. It’s never good for one’s health interacting with the Eldarians, be it as friend or foe.”

Where are you going? “I must make it outside the walls of the city. It’s a task of grave importance, but I’m afraid this body won’t carry me to much further. Please help me escape DarkStar, for the good of all peoples.”

How do we get out of the city? “We’re nearer the east bridge, and the west one is always more heavily guarded anyway.”

What is that you’re carrying. “It’s nothing. Stay away from it- I must get it to the right people.”

Why should I help? “Please. I don’t have much to offer, but you may have it. Once we make it out, my...caravan would be most grateful and able to compensate you in any form you see fit. But first we must make it out here.”

AWARDING EXPERIENCE POINTS

Each player engaged in combat earns 450XP, or enough to bring players to level 2.

TetrisNoir

Welcome to the seedy underbelly of city called Tetris- normally a city of right angles, where everything falls into place. But at night, under smoke hazed bar-lights, things aren't so simple.

TetrisNoir is a gritty, pulp reimagining of the beloved game Tetris. Here, completed rows go up in smoke, temporarily obscuring the next pieces, and the angle of the light changes. With some parts of the field in shadow, it's up to the detective in you to remember where things are.


How far are you willing to delve into the underworld?
TetrisNoir features three difficulty levels, which alter the available shapes and their colors.

Beat Cop
Beat Cop uses only the original set of tetrimos. They are all colored uniquely in grayscale.

Private Eye
At medium difficulty, five new tetrimos join the originals. The color of the pieces is evenly spread throughout the grayscale.

Hard-Boiled

Only the strong or crazy venture to Hard-Boiled. In addition to the seven original tetrimos and the five new Private Eye tetrimos, five more tetrimos are introduced and the colors of the tetrimos and their mirrors are the same.

Fith Sun: Ashes to Ashes

Socrates was a criminal. Thales was an aviator. I am a priest.

Fifth Sun is born, buried, and here memorialized. Perhaps we should reflect upon why it lies so still before us.

Initially, I imagined it as a twin-stick, like Binding of Isaac. When I deferred on the control scheme, it was with the understanding that the game was still the same, but with the users hands in a slightly different place. This, truly, is the folly. There is no negotiation on vision- merely scope. And this I knew, yet my own fear of hubris kept me from fulfilling my office.

  

The powers, too, were compromised, but more as a product of uncertainty of ability. I believe this was inevitable, but only once.

There are several other issues, but more than anything else, when I am Product Owner, my will be done, and my game be made. I need to remember the one golden rule: "Fuck with my game, I spank you."

Roadmap

What do we need to make to get to our value props?

PLAYER CHARACTER
- Design - The main character is Toci, resurrected Aztec Goddess. This requires animation.
- Movement/Aiming - Toci will move in four directions and aim following the mouse. This requires programming.
- Attacking -Toci has two attack slots, mapped to left and right mouse buttons. This requires programming.
-- Weapons - There are four weapons with four methods of attack which can be assigned to attack slots. This requires programming and animation.
-- Powers - Additionally, there are four powers that can be assigned to attack slots. These require programming and animation.

ENEMIES
- Design - The Spanish need animations for movement in four directions, and individual attack and death animations. This requires animation.
-Movement/Aiming - Enemies move and aim in four directions. This requires programming.

-AI -This will require a great deal of programming.
--group
--individual


ENVIRONMENT
- GUI - There are three GUIs, main, inventory, and temple. These require programming and animation.
- Tenochtitlan - This is the level, which are art tiles, colliders, and layout. This requires programming, design, and animation.

s0r: A Text Adventure

The Sprint 0 Round-up! Our goal for Sprint 0 was to complete four things:

• Enemy Types
• Enemies Surround Player
• Damage Received/Dealt
• Enemy Scaling

Are they done? ...That's not the question we should be asking ourselves at the moment. The goal of Sprint 0 is to build a structure, and we've built a rickety structure, you know, so we've got that, and now we can look and try to see why it got rickets.

Design, I thought, was sufficient. Stats were estimated, abilities pitched, all with relative competence, but without the framework of a play-tested game, the fine tuning of mechanics remains a chore. If anything, designers were under utilized, or at least with little to do.

Programming was quickly done. The base tasks proved little challenge, but I fear the real test will be the AI. Of course, this fear is unfounded because I know nothing about the AI script, but I do believe it is integral to the fun of this game, and as such should be worried over.

Truly, the greatest misstep was in art, as we only have 4 artists. This isn't so much an issue of the team, but rather a shortcoming of the idea* which wanted to utilize an aesthetic style as a key value proposition.

In regards to the trinity of specialization, I suspect that the programming side of the equation only grows heavier with the progression of the process, with design worked hardest in the beginning and the artist in the middle. Whether there is validity in the sentiment is secondary, though, to my need to correct my antiquated-Waterfall thought-structure. Programmers are no longer a group, neither designers nor artists. Once our base pipeline is tested, we are feature teams: coalitions of the...willing, I guess. We have individual features to address in all three facets - programming, design, and art - and dealing with only the feature in scope. The base upon which those features are added was concluded with Sprint 0 in accordance with the ideal that the product is always finished, and only continues to get more finished with iterative sprints.






*And most certainly not the idiot who thought it up and promoted it.

Value Props and the People Who Love Them

What is most important about the game? My guesses-

1. Historical setting. I can imagine people enjoying the Aztecs for one(/two) reasons. The most obvious is that they know something about the Aztec, and could appreciate seeing this knowledge in the game. The second is the negative of the first: they know nothing about the Aztecs, and thus take pleasure in the foreign-ness of the surroundings.

Survey says:

A plurality of people (44%) rated this of mid-level importance, with the next largest category (41%) feeling it of only slightly less importance than the first. So apparently the setting is important, but not completely a deal-breaker.

2. AI. I think something that will set this game apart is the group AI mechanics. Hack and slash is fun, but I think it'd be more fun if you were fighting a sea of enemies, where the crowd behaves in certain ways but individuals also display qualities.

Anyone else?

A majority of people definitely want varying enemy types; that's clear. As for their overall organization, the only clear message is that the enemy should not scatter. I don't think there's enough data to make any kind of inference regarding player preference to troop formation. My guess is that this is something that needs to be played by the customer. Surveys, as lovely as they are, just aren't conveying the experience of the quirks of our program, and generalized data is wonderful, but user interaction should now be the goal.

3. Inventory. This is a game about hitting things: the fun is most likely in the variety of ways there are to hit things. Thus, our job is as a nozzle, controlling the flow of of fun and agency to the user; too much at once and the player is overwhelmed and quits, too little they quit out of boredom. This is where our inventory, and to an extent our skill tree and mana mechanic come in.

53% of respondents chose to agree with the 'obvious' inventory answer, but I think the small sample size is enough to draw any conclusion irrelevant. 68%, and a more palpable 686 votes, support our direction regarding the use of the temple GUI housing the skill tree. I'm not prepared to interpret feedback on the mana cooldown.

Sprint 0

We're going into production, but before we can, we have to try. Sprint 0 is a team-run system-diagnostic test: tech rehearsal and an e-check.

We're identifying every possible task, figuring out exactly how difficult and how long it is, then using mock-ups and primitives, forming an alpha build. Hopefully, we'll look as shitty as this:

That's Bastion in alpha.

C4K: Town

This is an overhead view of the town. After playing it a couple times, Sage complained about the size. He suggested moving the buildings closer together; I might increase the player speed.

There's a billboard past the library, but I think I might move it up closer, so you could see it from the basketball court.

Fifth Sun: Roadmap

This is Fifth Sun, or rather just Fifth Sun's Combat SuperEpic. We've established how difficult for the team each feature would be to build, and then ordered them in terms of importance. Features which are important enough to consider, but are not critical to the final vision are placed in the backlog. Should any of the features be completed ahead of schedule, this frees up time for backlogged features to be developed.

Features:

1. Character Movement (13)
2. Interaction with enemies (40)
3. GUI (40)
4. Save functions (40)
5. Health (5)
6. Mana (5)
7. Weapon Leveling Script (8)
8. Weapon and abilities attacks (13)
9. Weapon and ability animations (20)
10. Kill animations (20)
11. Enemy design (20)
12. Enemy AI (20)
13. Enemy scaling (40)
14. XP tables (20)
15. Accurate art design (5)
16. Non-linear progress (8)
17. Cutscenes (40)

BackLog:

1. Quick Select (20)
2. Hidden content (5)

Fifth Sun: Presentation

• We are West State Studios, and this is our game, Fifth Sun.

• Fifth Sun is a real-time, top-down, hack-and-slash PC game with possible release on Steam or Desura.

• A screenshot mock-up showing Toci in Tenochtitlan.

• Here's the isolated GUI showing health, mana, weapons equipped, weapon levels, and player level.

• And a brief look at the weapon select GUI.

• With Fifth Sun, we're going for a bit like Binding of Isaac, 

• With some Hotline Miami, but more about open spaces and hoards of enemies.

• Hammerwatch is another similar game, but with a bit more RPG focus.

• What makes our game different?
• 2-d, top-down combat, but against multitudes of enemies and in large open spaces.
• Inventory allows mixing and matching, allowing the player to find a style they like.
• Skill-tree unlock system.

• Fifth Sun is for mid-core PC gamers, aged 22 - 28. 

• People who might play: Amy. Amy enjoys hard games and is looking for a challenge. 

• Rick is more interested in the abnegation and sense-pleasure Fifth Sun offers.

• Gene plays games for the story. Fifth Sun is most appealing for him because of the ongoing narrative of the Aztecs fighting Spanish forces.

• From the existing market, you can see we are priced competitively for the relative length of our game, approximately 10 - 15 hours of gameplay for one play-through. 

• Building West State would cost $16,745, with monthly operational costs of $7,395.

• Over the course of the eight month project, this totals $79,905.