Organizing

RaspberryCommie wrote:Also remember, there's #aggiegame on irc.synirc.net for more realtime discussion. Nobody's really been using it yet.

Shit, I've forgot to update on my own situation: my netbook is out of commission now, using Dad's laptop until I get my monitor cable I ordered arrives so I can back up stuff and take it back. I'll install an IRC client on this computer and be in the channel from now on.

So after a quick bull session in the IRC room. We have working ideas for three new marriage candidates. One female, and two male. Assuming Jar and Sai don't beat me to it, I should have writeups for them shortly.

Edit: the blanks in the bonuses are because I couldn't think of anything. Suggestions are welcome.

First one:

Name: Autumn Hale
Age: 22
Sex: Female
Occupation: none
Marital Status: single
Marriageable: yes

Appearance: Pale, and a bit sickly in appearance, she's mostly dressed in whatever style of hospital gown
Veronica keeps her in. Despite being confined to her bed or wheelchair most of the time, she does try to keep her
medium length black hair tidy, although it still shows a few prematurely grey hairs due to her illness. (or is
black with brown streaks) Has green eyes.

Bio: Autumn has been sick most of her life, usually confined to one hospital or another since she was a kid.
Eventually a doctor suggested that maybe spending some time in the country could help her, explaining the cleaner
air might improve her condition somewhat. As such she's spent the last year or so under the care of Dr Foster.

When not in bed, she spends most of her time in a wheelchair due to losing the use of her legs during one
treatment as a child. She still has feeling in them. She just can't move them.
Personality: Despite her long incarceration in the hospital, she's still rather friendly to anyone who takes the
time to visit her, although she does seem somewhat bitter about losing the ability to walk, despite the treatment
also saving her life.

Still, her biggest problem is the loneliness her long isolation has caused. Aside from the monthly visit from her
parents and Doctor Foster and her nurse, she almost never has visitors. Nobody in this town knows her, so why
should they stop by? she thinks. So she spends most of her time buried in a book, trying to escape the life doled
out to her by fate.

Friends: She's friendly enough with Veronica and her nurse. Other than that, most of the town doesn't even know
she exists.

Likes: Books, sweets, vegetable dishes
Dislikes: Fish, people who stare

Special Events: Her birthday is January/Winter 17. As you make friends with her, she'll start leaving the hospital more often, usually near
Veronica's booth at festivals. If you don't get her to a certain level of friendship (or advance Randolph's rival
events far enough) her parents will transfer her to another hospital, moving her out of town permanently.

Rival: Randolph
Friendship Bonus:
Dating Bonus:
Wedding Bonus:

Number 2:

Name: Jerry Collins
Age: 24
Sex: Male
Occupation: Bartender
Marital Status: single
Marriageable: yes

Appearance: Tall, thin and never without a smile. Jerry is the consummate bartender. Always impecabbly dressed with his blonde hair combed back and face neatly shaven. He might be overdressed for a small town tavern, but he always says that a little sophistication goes a long way.

Bio: Jerry was born in town, but upon leaving school he left for the city, always having dreamed of leaving his little town for the big city. While there, he drifted from various jobs, never making much money until the dice finally landed in his favor, and he got a job at an upscale cocktail lounge making drinks. The pay was finally enough to pay his rent, and he was rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.

Eventually though, he grew a bit homesick and he left his job and opened up his own little pub/lounge back where he was born, trying to bring a little bit of class to his rural home.

Personality: Despite his appearance and the decor of his pub, he's the exact opposite of the snooty upperclass bartender. Even the farmes who come in covered in dirt and who knows what will find cold drinks, a smile, and a shoulder to cry on, as his years of serving drinks have made him an excellent listener.

In private however, one will find that he's actually fairly insecure about himself. He's a great listener, but who's going to take the time out to listen to HIS problems for once?

Friends: Pretty much everyone in town, although he seems closest with Molly
Likes: Alcohol, Fish, conversation
Dislikes: Rowdy people who mess up his bar, sweet things

Special Events: His birthday is August/Summer 29.

Rival: Molly
Friendship Bonus: Lower prices at the bar
Dating Bonus: Friendship bonus with everyone in town
Wedding Bonus:

Don't have a bio yet for the third character, but here's what I do have:

Name: Connor Quigley
Age: 23
Sex: Male
Occupation: Nurse
Marital Status: single
Marriageable: yes

Appearance: Connor is a bit on the short side, with wild, mouse brown hair. Dr Foster doesn't care for this aspect, as she says it looks unprofessional, but he always responds that it just refuses to stay down.

He's typically dressed in his nurse's scrubs, even though it's just a small town clinic. He believes that it puts people more at ease when they walk in. "It's a soothing color. Why else do you think they paint wards like that?"

Bio:

Personality: In one word: playful. He is a sharp contrast from the doctor's professional demeanor, often joking around with patients, or telling amusing stories, and never fails to have a little candy available for the children.

Outside of work, he's even more outgoing, often pulling pranks on others. Never ones that could cause injury of course. He's a medical professional. That would be wrong!

However, he is also a severe neat freak, as when he's not helping the doctor, or selling health suppliments he's cleaning the clinic, or going over his room for the hundredth time.

Friends: He's good friends with Dr. Foster (although their friendship doesn't usually surface on the job) and with Randolph.

Likes: Candy, jokes, his job
Dislikes: Dirt, people who don't clean themselves.

Special Events: Birthday is October/Fall 3.

Rival: Veronica
Friendship Bonus: Lower prices on herbs and drinks from clinic.
Dating Bonus:
Wedding Bonus:

Hey, cool characters. Got a few suggestions for filling blanks.

Conner's dating bonus: I Free health treatment; wedding bonus would be an increase in stamina, because of his insistence on healthy eating and living.



idea on Conner's bio: A personal nurse hired and paid for by the parents of Autumn; maybe he came from a city. If we wanted to include some deeper relationship with Veronica, could be that they went to the same medical school.

Jerry's wedding bonus: Free drinks on demand, maybe?

Speaking of wedding bonuses, I had an idea I wanted to toss by you guys, to create greater depth, but which will also create more work.

Two different types of wedding bonuses. One bonus for if you get married to the person; the other is a bonus for maxing out friendship with them as a same-sex character, and marrying someone else (Kind of like the blacksmith forging you a special gold ring).

Looks like I have some free time today, so I will try to work on the son and daughter of the general store owner. Her husband should come along in the next day or two.

Also, likely because I missed out on the IRC, but I haven't a clue what you guys mean by rivalry; will the character compete with the main character for the affections of certain characters, that sort of thing?

Yeah. Using FoMT for an example, basically like how Cliff was your rival for Ann. And Grey was for Mary. That sort of thing.

Also, I like the dual marriage bonus idea. It'll take a bit longer to think of another one, but it shouldn't be too bad.

Groovy. I'll be sure to edit the other characters I made to have this.

Name: Gerald Fitzpatrick
Age: 15
Sex: Male
Occupation: Student
Marital Status: Single
Marriageable: N/A

Appearance: Obsidian black hair that is almost always kept in a crew cut style. A stout and muscular lad, given his age. Has hazel eyes, much like his mother.

Shop: Assists at his mother's general store.

Bio: Matilda's son, and the first born, he was raised here in the town, like many others. He has never been a particularly bright boy, often confused by things others his age understand, but he has always been very well-behaved.

Personality: Slightly clumsy and heavy-handed, but he always means well, and is sincerely apologetic when he messes something up. Very mature, responsible, and loyal (to his mother).

Rival: None
Friends: Other children, his family, the baker
Likes: Sweetrolls (especially hot and fresh ones), flute music, spring water
Dislikes: Vegetables (But eats them anyways), fruits (But eats them anyway)

Friendship bonus: Helps out around the farm [Not sure how to implement this; thoughts?]
Dating Bonus: N/A
Wedding Bonus: N/A

Name: Sara Fitzpatrick
Age: 14
Sex: Female
Marital Status: Single
Marriageable: No

Appearance: She shares her brother's black hair, but unlike him, prefers to wear it in a bob cut. She is very thin and frail looking.

Shop: Assists at the general store with her mother and brother.

Bio: Matilda's daughter, born almost one year exactly after Gerald. Has lived in the town, but has loudly expressed a desire to "see the world", which her mother gets indignant about ("No daughter of mine is going to go off gallivanting and globetrotting.")

Because she has a rebellious streak, she has gotten used to getting in trouble.

Personality: Chaotic, she prefers to do whatever she wants, with little or no regard to other peoples opinions or property. She is very hyper, and constantly running around and getting in trouble. Most consider her an annoyance.

Rival: None
Friends: Her family
Likes: Sweets and candies of all sort, lilacs
Dislikes: Vegetables (Yucky!!), meat (Gag!!)

Friendship Bonus: Will stop stealing fruit from the players orchard [Other ideas are welcome and encouraged]
Dating Bonus: N/A
Wedding Bonus: Will be a flower girl if you max out her friendship.

Admin wrote:Friendship Bonus: Will stop stealing fruit from the players orchard [Other ideas are welcome and encouraged]

I think this is a pretty cool idea actually. Let's say that we have a fruit-bearing tree by default that produces three fruit daily and requires no maintenance. She could come in at noon if you haven't collected the fruit and take one unless you talk to her and tell her otherwise while she's there or catch her in the act.

Admin wrote:Friendship bonus: Helps out around the farm [Not sure how to implement this; thoughts?]

Let's say that you can request his help once a week for a day in either taking care of crops or taking care of animals.

Nice ideas, Jar.

Larto has opted to do balloon icons (emotes) for us to replace the default ones that I assume we will be using in scripted event conversations.



The exclamation depicted is the one he has completed. Assuming we don't just remake the default ones piece by piece, what sort of balloon icons do we want?

Those emotes are looking great, and everyone's character ideas are spiffy.

A bit IRL busy as of now, forgive me for not hopping onto the IRC's and being quiet on steam. Real time chattan's not really my thing.

To do list for design:

BASIC

Stamina and Time System
Farm Layout

ADVANCED

Crop and Livestock products lists
Town Map and Layout
NPC Dialogues and Events

-----


Once we get unanimous on basics, we can actually start coding. Town layout will be a group effort, since everybody has to decide on who goes where, who's living with who, etc.

Farm layout will be pretty simple, and I should be able to figure something out. We've got a minimum field size set already, after all.

soak314 wrote:Once we get unanimous on basics, we can actually start coding.

Assuming we're not just using RPG Maker as a template, I've been working on it bit by bit still.

Addendum: all of those emotes would be of use to the writers, I imagine. The more 'emotions' we have at our disposal, the more interesting the events.

Pardon, just now had the time to read the new posts right and proper.

Still a bit caught up in stuff, do go on in the meantime.

Update.

Apologies for slacking off on character design. Lately, my muse has been pretty damn quiet, as I've been dealing with the aftershocks of a very nasty split up. Don't worry, though, I won't go into derailing details here.

I will hopefully get two or three more characters done by the end of the week.

As far as icon sets go, I like the third to last set (Has the green and red question mark). But, I think, substituting one of the zzz sleeping emoticons for the single z one would be awesome.

I also have an idea for farm layout, will try to put something together in paint to demonstrate it. I also think it would be cool if we could have multiple, selectable farm layouts, but obviously that would be a plus thing to do, not a basic necessity.

Edit: here it is. it is horribly rough because I fail at painting.

The orchard has those twelve spots because it would be limited to growing twelve trees. The oddly colored mark would be a default apple tree.

Trees indicated in orange because I like Autumn. Anyway, feel free to do with this what you will; scrap it, be inspired, make something out of it, whatever.

Field segregation per enterprise is an interesting proposal, I'll see if divvying up the current field will affect the established design any. I like the idea of the having the flower garden the most. It is, like, totally kawaii.


Ah, and for the trees. It'd also be a design option to have them surround the crop field as a perimeter. IRL we position them as such to take advantage of the trees being windbreaks. In game it'd be a nice way to get the big things out of the main crop field without using up too obtrusive a land area. And it would look nice.

00000000000
0. . . . . . . . . 0
0. . . . . . . . . 0
0. . . . . . . . . 0
0. . . . . . . . . 0
00000000000

Yeah, something like that. 0's are the trees.

STAMINA

Okay, having a job is surprisingly time consuming so this won't be too well thought out.

Player has 100 stamina points to begin with. Using a tool gets you a -1 to SP. Using them all up knocks you out, and you wake up at the doctor's, who sends you home to sleep for the rest of the day. No real penalties besides losing the remaining hours for that particular day.

Power berries will raise stamina by 20. You'll be able to get 10, for a max of 300 stamina. Power Berry locations will, again, be determined mostly by what anybody can think up. Some should be awarded for contests, some should be chance encounters, etc. etc.

Shit, will think up a time system soon. Again, pardon the output lag.

So are we not going with upgradable tools?

Or are we just gonna make them do other stuff/cover more area rather than having them use less stamina per use?

We're going with upgradable tools. Have their costs partly covered in one of my posts already. They'll probably go 1-2-3 stamina points per 'charge' level, but will also cover a lot more ground per use if charged. If that's possible within the bounds of RPG maker, that is.

If covering multiple tiles can't be done, could it go down into fractions of Stamina? I.e. Level 0 is 1.0, Level 1 is 0.8 stamina, Level 2 is 0.6, etc.?

Jesus, sorry for the MIA guys I've been really swamped lately.

TIME

Okay, so after booting up a few roms and revving up an old watch:

BtN: Roughly 1 minute per second, so every hour lasts 1 minute IRL. Time is frozen in buildings and the mine.
FoTM: Half of that, 30 seconds per hour, 5 seconds per 10 minute tick. Time is also frozen in interior cells.
MM: About the same as FoTM's, possibly a bit faster. (WAY too fast imo) Time only freezes inside of buildings.
AP: Jumps around with the inconsistent FPS. Seems to be identical to BtN in most respects.

So, way I see it we could definitely stick with BtN or FotM on this one, since it's pretty unanimous that they've got the best 'feel' amongst all of the HM games.

Freezing time inside of buildings was both a very clever design choice and a dirty logistical trick, on Natsume's part. It allows the player a fuckton of breathing time, especially when dealing with the decidedly more tedious maintenance of livestock. I'd emulate it completely, and freeze time inside of buildings, including the player's own barns and coops.

That stated, time constraints cannot be tested at all until we get a basic engine running.

****

Well, afaik that's our base system down. I'll leave the characters and fluff up to you guys. Will get to studying RPG maker eventually, so I contribute something other than the basics. Once basic code is handled, we can start with world design since we'll know what RPG Maker can let us do.

I too much apologize for my absence, especially since you'd think coming up with characters is pretty easy.

Well, I am also moving, and have been doing all sorts of things related to that, only to be postponed from my original move date, 'til July 1st. And after then, I'll likely be without internet for a week, until I can get my cable company to hook me up.

That gives me like two weeks of time to work on characters and such, so hopefully I will churn out a few more. I do, as always, appreciate any ideas anybody has, or anything they have on hand that they think might help spark my imagination.

I'm going to opt out of scripting duties I'm afraid and stick to music when it's ready to be commissioned. I don't think I can stand working on something like this competently otherwise.

For what it's worth, I have plenty of free time now, so I can help with anything that I'm physically capable of. I'm happy to look at content, help with music, potentially have a go at scripting with a bit of help and possibly have a go at spriting. I don't want to sit back when I could be doing something.

Promises, promises, and I break them all. I'm sorry, folks. Got waylaid by some medical issues. It feels like, lately, all I'm doing is making excuses, though.

Had my move date changed again, this time to the 28th. Running around like a headless chicken, taking measurements, packing, and doing all sorts of relevant things, and then not having much time or desire to be creative left afterwards.

I know it's been nothing but excuses from me lately, but I honestly will crack down and get back to making characters once everything settles down over here. Meanwhile, I'm curious how well everyone else is doing? Their hasn't been any activity since I checked back in like a week ago.