TIGSource - January 2013 (38 posts)
#114 January 03, 2013 10:51 PM
Quote from: Quarry on January 03, 2013, 03:16:42 PM Where did you get the idea for this project?
From the many times I’ve gone through immigration in the past few years. The anxiety as a foreigner and comfort as a native returning home got me thinking about the whole process and how there’s probably enough there for a game. Also inspired by various spy movies where passing through immigration is often a critical moment.
Some mockups:
Verifying Identity
Planning a small (tiny) mini-game to highlight the finger tips.
Strip search
To keep the interface consistent, strip searching will be done via photo. The curtain closes, applicant strips, and the camera snaps two shots which you can inspect as any other document. The photo can be flipped to see the butt-shot. Haven’t decided if the nude bits will be censored.
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#115 Eigen (January 04, 2013 02:03 AM)
Damn, that’s one messed up country.#116 Lynx (January 04, 2013 02:41 PM)
The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s ‘Cold War’ vibe I was getting off of this thing. Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?#117 AD1337 (January 04, 2013 03:45 PM)
This is looking great. Awesome graphics and feeling, excellent theme. Sorry I’m not adding much to the discussion, I just had to say it.#118 andypaxo (January 05, 2013 08:02 AM)
As many have already said, this is incredibly original. Love the aesthetic as well.There were a couple of things that I really didn’t catch on to when starting to play
- How to enable the deny stamp. This is in the rules below the game, but why not add it to the rulebook?
- Nothing made sense before realizing that there is a rulebook. How about drawing the player’s attention to it early in the game
- I didn’t know that you could actually highlight rules in the rulebook to get a denial until reading this thread. No idea whatsoever.
Maybe don’t take these suggestions too seriously. This is kind of a puzzle game, and part of the enjoyment is figuring stuff out.
Either which way - huge kudos for implementing visa stamping as a game and making it fun. Never seen anything quite like this.
#119 herror (January 05, 2013 08:12 AM)
Quote from: dukope on January 03, 2013, 10:51:55 PM Haven’t decided if the nude bits will be censored.
Uncensored. Unless you have a supervisor that censors the photos, that would be acceptable.
#120 randomshade (January 05, 2013 01:24 PM)
I love this, awesome concept and nice execution. Sometimes it is hard to figure out how to get a denial approved even if you know the discrepancy, and as a previous poster said, that’s ok since this is a puzzle game. I’d say that it’s ok, but that it should always be logical/support all logical methods of realizing the discrepancy.Here are two examples that baffled me for a bit:
1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting “must have entry permit” in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in “no correlation” even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting “must have a passport” and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more :)2: When a person has a passport with an invalid issuing district, finding the issuing district in the rule book and then trying to connect that with the passport/passport nation doesn’t work. You have to selected the issuing city in the passport and then select the valid ISS’s in the passport nation in the rule book. To me, both of those actions make sense and should be accepted.
But yah, this is really cool and I’m excited to play it as you make new versions. Well done :gentleman:
#121 pluckyporcupine (January 05, 2013 05:27 PM)
Quote from: Lynx on January 04, 2013, 02:41:03 PM The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s ‘Cold War’ vibe I was getting off of this thing. Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?
I concur with this.But I’m interested in trying the new build. Looks like a lot has gotten done since 12/15!
#122 January 05, 2013 07:41 PM
Quote from: Lynx on January 04, 2013, 02:41:03 PM The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s ‘Cold War’ vibe I was getting off of this thing. Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?
Yup, you’re right. The game is set in the alternate 1980’s so it does (barely) fit the technical level. But we’re talking communist 80’s and anyways it doesn’t fit the aesthetic. I’m changing it to something more low-tech. Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try to post about the new (old) fingerprint system later today.
Quote from: andypaxo on January 05, 2013, 08:02:42 AM There were a couple of things that I really didn’t catch on to when starting to play
- How to enable the deny stamp. This is in the rules below the game, but why not add it to the rulebook?
- Nothing made sense before realizing that there is a rulebook. How about drawing the player’s attention to it early in the game
- I didn’t know that you could actually highlight rules in the rulebook to get a denial until reading this thread. No idea whatsoever.
There’s a bit of text below the .swf that covers these issues. They’re all legit comments though and will be addressed properly in-game in later builds.
Quote from: randomshade on January 05, 2013, 01:24:03 PM 1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting “must have entry permit” in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in “no correlation” even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting “must have a passport” and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more :)
Arstotzkan citizens don’t need an entry permit so maybe that’s what was happening? Actually it just sounds like a crazy bug. I’ve changed a bunch of stuff about the underlying logic so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.
2: When a person has a passport with an invalid issuing district, finding the issuing district in the rule book and then trying to connect that with the passport/passport nation doesn’t work. You have to selected the issuing city in the passport and then select the valid ISS’s in the passport nation in the rule book. To me, both of those actions make sense and should be accepted.
Good idea. It’s a lot easier to go to the correct nation and highlight the correct issuing cities + wrong passport but I agree that all logical methods of marking a discrepancy should work. Will fix.
Quote from: johnki on January 05, 2013, 05:27:00 PM But I’m interested in trying the new build. Looks like a lot has gotten done since 12/15!
A lot of stuff is in mid-being-done right now so it’ll probably be a week or so before I can get a new build up. This devlog has kept me pretty on-point with the scheduling though so I’m grateful for that.
Thanks to everybody for playing and helping me improve things.
#123 January 06, 2013 05:39 AM
Revised Fingerprint System
The top sheet is collected from the applicant in the booth. The bottom identity record is printed out based on their passport name. Multiple records may exist for the same name and each record may include an alias. This can be used to verify discrepant names on the different documents.
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#124 Taber (January 06, 2013 11:50 AM)
Nice solution to the fingerprint problem. I especially like the broken scanline on the document!As to the strip search, why not just defer that to some guards in a back room or something? Calling for a search is a pretty extreme measure and I’m not sure how much fun it is to just see some naked person who had a bomb taped to their leg. Not much of a puzzle there. If they find something, great, if not, well you just violated someone’s decency on a hunch, nice going! :who, me?:
#125 randomshade (January 06, 2013 12:19 PM)
Quote from: dukope on January 05, 2013, 07:41:42 PM Quote from: randomshade on January 05, 2013, 01:24:03 PM 1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting “must have entry permit” in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in “no correlation” even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting “must have a passport” and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more :)
Arstotzkan citizens don’t need an entry permit so maybe that’s what was happening? Actually it just sounds like a crazy bug. I’ve changed a bunch of stuff about the underlying logic so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.
That totally could have been it – I thought everyone in the build had at least one flaw so I didn’t even check for legit citizens.
Quote from: dukope on January 06, 2013, 05:39:02 AM Revised Fingerprint System
More love :kiss:
#126 Quarry (January 06, 2013 12:25 PM)
I hope you revise the object shadows#127 Lynx (January 07, 2013 06:11 PM)
The new computer printout fingerprint stuff looks thoroughly awesome. Perfect! ^_^
#128 January 09, 2013 07:45 AM
Not much new to see at the moment. Been working on straightening out the underlying error-generating logic so I can script the story elements. Also worked out the basic story premise. I’m not sure how much of that I’ll share here since it doesn’t really affect the gameplay and some may prefer it to be a surprise.
Goodbye Old Fingerprints
I captured this before deleting the code for the old fingerprint system:
Looks ok but it’s pretty pointless and as mentioned doesn’t fit the theme. Posted here for posterity.
Nightly Stats
Some story-related stuff:
Whereas your performance as an inspector is reported each morning via letters from the Ministry, your home life is reported on nightly screens like this. As you go about your daily work you’ll be responsible for your family’s welfare. Like a proper communist state, you live together in a small apartment; dogged by rent, heating, food, health, and other various costs. Your small salary as an inspector is barely enough to squeak by so you’ll have some tough choices to make about how to spend your money.
If you do your job well you’ll be entitled to raises and other perks. On the other hand many applicants are desperate to enter Arstotzka and a few pocketed bribes might go unnoticed.
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#129 Lynx (January 09, 2013 04:18 PM)
That is a rather bleak screen!What if instead of just writing out text, you handled it in a visual novel fashion: at the end of the day, you return home, you are greeted with character portraits of your wife welcoming you, your relatives giving you short updates on what’s new with them, i.e. your uncle coughs and maybe tries to look like he’s manning up through it.
Then your pay appears in the form of paper money that you can click and drag to the optional spending. Maybe at home you’re challenged to guess whether your uncle is really sick or if he’s shamming it in order to get money for alcohol…
That’s obviously a lot more work. You could present it as a series of choices. As you leave the door, your saved money is shown, then your pay is added on top of it in stacks of bills. This could be narrated in a comic fashion with your (silhouetted) inspector leaving the customs checkpoint. Then you get home, and maybe you’re presented with the option of upgrading to a fancier house, or downgrading to a smaller, more squalid one. You opt to stick with what you’ve got (big downpayment needed to switch?) and go in the door…
Then each relative comes up and gives his or her story for the day and you have the option of throwing them some money or keeping it, affecting your relationship with them. If you give them money, they might reward you with clues and information, like maybe the drunkard uncle knows some people in the mafia who are planning to make a major guns shipment, and they’d surely pay you well to be allowed through with few questions…
#130 DustyDrake (January 09, 2013 05:28 PM)
The above.
Do as much of it as you can.
Please?
#131 January 09, 2013 07:35 PM
I appreciate the detailed suggestion but there’s a couple reasons why I don’t think this is best.
I hate work as much as the next guy but in this case I’m not just being lazy :grin:. I intentionally designed this part of the game to be stark and simple. Basically, I want to add another facet to the primary (daytime) gameplay without too much distraction for the player.
My plan is to expand on a similar technique I used in Republia Times. In that case there was only a single sentence about the family each day but it served to humanize the player and make their daily decisions more difficult. I want to take that same effect and give it more weight. Not by defining the family more, but by providing more fine-grained influence over their wellbeing.
Although a single night screen from one day looks pretty stark, your family’s status will change and progress throughout the game. If your uncle is sick too long without medicine he’ll die. Or his medicine costs will go up each day. Or maybe your son’s birthday is coming up and he wants a new toy. Skip your uncle’s medicine for a day and you can afford the toy. Or, as you mention, a new apartment with lower rent/heating costs is available for a fee. The choices you make on this screen will have lasting effects and you’ll need to be careful about how you spend your money.
About the hints from family members, there will be plenty of story and flavor elements coming from the immigrants themselves. I prefer to keep that stuff wed closely to the daily gameplay as opposed to putting it in the separate night screens.
Having said all that business, I’m not completely against more involved nightly updates. At this point I’m moving forward with this simple implementation. Later down the line it may become clear that something more complicated would benefit the game.
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#132 lpmaurice (January 09, 2013 07:52 PM)
I like the direction you’re taking with this. The game is already fun, but simulating the decisions you might need to take as a purveyor humanizes the subject matter in a good (or evil!) way.Also:
Quote from: dukope on January 09, 2013, 07:35:49 PM …
At this point I’m moving forward with this simple implementation. Later down the line it may become clear that something more complicated would benefit the game.:hand clap: This is always the best way to develop a game. Do the minimum and iterate if you’re not satisfied.
#133 Lynx (January 10, 2013 02:28 PM)
Fair enough! I just find the all-text (practically) screen jarring.#134 Taber (January 11, 2013 08:39 AM)
Quote :hand clap: This is always the best way to develop a game. Do the minimum and iterate if you’re not satisfied.Agreed, though those suggestions by Lynx were quite intriguing!
You’re also toying with a quality of imagination which I think will end up drawing the player in. Whereas showing an actual family would objectify them somewhat, merely mentioning them forces you to imagine your family, or at least a family you tailor to the story.
Also just FYI, I teach a college level Intro to Game Design class and used your project as an example of an engaging game in development. They were all quite impressed at this early stage. Keep up the great work!
#135 Panurge (January 12, 2013 02:38 AM)
I agree that the ‘home’ segments will probably work best as they are - kept simple and leaving much to the imagination. That black screen does look a little boring, though, and doesn’t seem to fit the style of the rest of the game. Perhaps you could make it look as if it has been handwritten on lined paper, so the effect is of the player keeping his own accounts in order to balance his finances and look after his family. It might add an extra note of pathos.I still love everything you’re doing here.
#136 January 14, 2013 08:05 AM
Quote from: Taber on January 11, 2013, 08:39:42 AM Also just FYI, I teach a college level Intro to Game Design class and used your project as an example of an engaging game in development. They were all quite impressed at this early stage. Keep up the great work!
Well damn, that’s pretty encouraging!
Theme Song
Composed a brief musical theme for the game and hooked it up to the title screen (YouTube link):
The game’ll have music for the title, intro, night, and end-game screens, but not during the main day gameplay bits.
Slow Progress
At the moment I’m also putting together new inspectable documents and adding features as I need them. This part’s a little slow with not much to show. I’m working to get a build out that has the basic gameplay progression divided into days, but without the night-time/family management yet.
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#137 AD1337 (January 15, 2013 02:36 AM)
That’s beautiful. It’s awesome how you make everything fit the theme, from mechanics to the logo marching.The music is amazing as well, what program did you use to create it?
#138 Eigen (January 15, 2013 02:45 AM)
:my word!:Oh wow, awesome intro and tune! It just fits the theme so very well. This game is going to be big :hand clap:
I only have a very small suggestion. I think the logo should start apprearing on the third beat not the second one, let the first two sound to an empty screen.
#139 January 16, 2013 01:47 AM
Quote from: AD1337 on January 15, 2013, 02:36:16 AM The music is amazing as well, what program did you use to create it?
Thank you. I composed the music on a Yamaha MOX6 keyboard. It has a full sequencer with effects and stuff so I only needed to grab the audio output using Audacity on my mac.
Quote from: Eigen on January 15, 2013, 02:45:29 AM I only have a very small suggestion. I think the logo should start apprearing on the third beat not the second one, let the first two sound to an empty screen.
Roger that; will do.
#140 January 19, 2013 05:09 AM
Random stuff that’s changed/updated recently:
Speech Chat
I initially had solitary speech bubbles (visible upthread) that pop up for the dialog. The little back-and-forth at the beginning ended up being too slow and stunted with those bubbles so I changed it to more of a scrolling chat window. Flows much better although I’m not crazy about overlapping the face.
Goodbye Telex
In that pic you can also see that the Telex is gone from the console. I couldn’t find a good use for it after adding the fingerprint system. In its place is the daily bulletin which you can reference at any time.
Daily Bulletin
First bulletin in the game. These are waiting on your desk at the start of each day. Later bulletins will contain mugshots of wanted people. The Telex was going to have those but I think it fits better here.
Dialog
I’ve been writing a bunch of the generic question and response dialog recently. Initially I authored it to flow naturally with proper English grammar but the game lost much of its Eastern-European feel. Now I’m trying rougher, less fluent English and it’s a little better:
“I’ll stay for three months.” becomes “I stay three months.”
Pretty subtle but I was surprised at how the fluent English destroyed some of the mood. I hope this works better.
Action Buttons
These buttons will appear as the result of an interrogation. After highlighting an error in inspection mode only one option is available: Interrogate. Based on the entrant’s response, one or more of these action buttons will appear. They’ll stay in place until you click them or move on to the next entrant.
Giving Back
Instead of just returning all the docs to the counter you now have to explicitly give them back. This’ll allow confiscations and document trades later down the line.
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#141 jonbro (January 19, 2013 05:59 AM)
I like that you are making all these games with sorta the same setting, it is a cool bit of world building that I would like to try out at some point.
#142 January 23, 2013 06:47 AM
A picture worth 8 words. Should work for the whole intro.
Not sure I can capture it better with a proper image tbh.
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#143 rek (January 23, 2013 09:13 AM)
This looks great! Just caught up with the thread.Re: date format
Why pick just one? As the thread shows there is really no true standard format for dates, as countries pick and choose which format works for them. It adds an extra area of is-that-right-or-wrong? if you have to compare date formats on different documents.#144 Panurge (January 23, 2013 09:29 AM)
Quote from: dukope on January 23, 2013, 06:47:07 AM A picture worth 8 words. Should work for the whole intro.
Not sure I can capture it better with a proper image tbh.
I can see this working well with very simple, bold images, borrowing from the style of old soviet propaganda posters.
#145 roc (January 23, 2013 12:02 PM)
I’ve been meaning to gush about how much I love the idea and execution of this game, everything supports the atmosphere so well I’m freaking out oh my god. You should call it Pampers, Please because it’s so awesome that the first build I played made me do literally every bathroom thing in my pants. I especially love the Where in the Dystopia is Carmen Sandiego vibe it exudes, you rule.e: and I really like the implications of downplaying home/family interactions, for me it could really reinforce the setting the game takes place in and the work/life priorities the state probably “encourages” its officials to adopt :tongue:
#146 fylth (January 23, 2013 03:02 PM)
If you’re still looking at a way to do the end of day screens, I had an idea.
How about an accounts book/diary. On the left hand page would be family updates and on the left would be a hand drawn looking breakdown of savings, earnings and things you need to buy, which the player can tick a box next to the ones they want to spend on.I think this method would keep to the games low-tech aesthetic while also being immersive.
#147 :^) (January 23, 2013 03:33 PM)
this is really cool.#148 Maverick Denizen (January 24, 2013 06:13 AM)
This is starting to look better and better. Amazing stylistic taste man, very original, I’m liking it a lot!#149 DET. Defective (January 25, 2013 03:47 AM)
Really enjoying the build, though I keep hoping for a legitimate person to come along. :concerned:I don’t know why, but I get a Carmen Sandiego vibe from it as well, and I really love it.
Quote from: secv on January 23, 2013, 10:35:33 PM Edit: I ran into a bug where a guy walked in with no papers.It’s not a bug, some people are just dumb enough to walk in with no ID or permit. Bring up your R&R book and click the “Entrant must have a passport” option.
Unless you’re talking about the few who walk in with a passport and no permit. I thought it was a bug, too (it’s what actually got me to log on and post), but I looked closely and realized they were an Arstotzka resident (or at least, posing as one), meaning they don’t need a permit.
In that case, you just need to find a discrepancy in the passport.
#150 :^) (January 28, 2013 02:44 PM)
at last i can fulfill my power fantasy to let a ton of illegals into a country.YES! GO ON! WOO!
PACK YOUR BAGS SUCKA CUZ YOU COMING ON IN!
CAN I GET AN AMEN??
YOU ARE APPROVED! MOVE ALONG!
#151 Quarry (January 28, 2013 04:56 PM)
BRIBERY!?