Edit: Project is now a different thing.
Project: Patcher
What if Persona and Disco Elysium had a baby in space, and the baby looked at me?
I always wanted to make a Final Fantasy style JRPG, but I didn't like the fact that the player has no agency or choice in the narrative. When I played Disco Elysium in 2019, I found myself thinking: Wait a tick, I could make this conversation and skill check system just in Ink I bet. And then scope creep it into a JRPG later!
Well I did, and then realised that to make a narrative first game you actually have to write well and write lots of it at that! This somewhat put me off for a while. But I'm going to take another crack at it, and hope that I can world-build my way out of bad dialogue.
The setting of the story is heavily inspired by Tsutomu Nihei works Blame! and Aposimz. Humanity sent seed ships to colonize another solar system, but the overlord AI running the infrastructure-building robots arrived mad. Some 200 odd years later, we human colonists live in edges of a self-building city. One that grows in dagerously with no thought to biological life.
Where we at
I'm picking up the project (read: a pile of test scenes) with the dialogue system and basic UI working, an RPG stats and skill check system, and some simple camera and movement controls. This is really enough to start actually making the game so I really don't have an excuse.
I haven't touched the Unity project in almost a year, but I have been writing (read: daydreaming) and have the core beats of the plot pinned down, with the major characters somewhat fleshed out. If I don't make this game, it will end up as custom D&D campaign at least!
Act 1: okay, Act 2: Good, Act 3: Some stuff to work out, Act 4: ????
For next steps, I need to learn how to model a character(!) and then rig(!!)/animate(!!!) it... fuck me. But the visual goal is "PS2 remaster" so hopefully that will make things simpler. I need reference, but I can't draw! So I'm going to bash together some model sheets from my concept board.
AI prompters can't comprehend this level of character design theft
Anyway, I want to start posting about the project somewhere... so.. here.
