itch.io

So I had this idea the other day while listening to the FTL soundtrack. What about an X-Com game where the UFO intercept part is basically the FTL combat system (with gunships large enough for multiple crewmembers who can walk around in their ships)? 

I think the two systems would synergize really well. Take enemy systems --on the one hand, you can weaken UFOs by destroying their systems (weapons, shield gens, etc.), but on the other hand, any system you destroy you won't be able to salvage after you've recovered the crashed UFO.

Also, it'd add a reason to engage the UFO up closer if only some weapons could target specific rooms/systems. Using UFO Defense as an example, Avalanche missiles could be safe standoff weapons, but short-range missiles and guns would allow you to target out aliens or specific systems.

Also, the same way your ship in FTL gets more and more damaged over time, your gunships in this X-Com game could repair very slowly, so that they'd get more and more damaged with subsequent UFO dogfights. You'd have to prioritize what to repair (hit points or various systems), and you'd have to make decisions as to when to intercept and when you have to let your gunships wait and repair.

You could also play around with FTL-like gameplay systems by having the player unlock scanners that allow you to look inside UFOs so you know what to target, better engines for higher evasion percentage, etc. Maybe instead of unlocking just unlocking new ships, you research and unlock new components and whatnot for your gunships.

Also, since anyone on the ship can get injured during a fight, you could give players the option of putting soldiers on the same ships that shot down UFOs, you could risk putting soldiers on the same ship you use to shoot down UFOs, knowing any of them might get killed during an aerial dogfight.

So is there any X-Com game that has played around with this particular system? If not, feel free to toy around with the idea --I'm busy with my current game and I doubt I have the experience and skill to make a full-fledged X-Com game anytime soon anyway :P .

What a CRAZY idea!

I don't know you, but I hope you get your life back in motion. Best of luck to you!

Forgot to reply: That was pretty much exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much! Good to know I'm not the only one exploring this topic.

Yeah, that's an incredibly clunky solution if that's the reason. Would've been much better to just show the uploader's game by default anyway, and then just hide every other upload. So weird.

Okay, so one of the games I'm making has some mature themes it discusses like domestic/sexual abuse, so I labelled it NSFW. Not sure if that's how the tag is supposed to be used, but I digress. But then I notice I see 'adult' (p0rn) games even though I remember turning that off. When I go to check, well, see the title.

I'm not sure how it makes sense that if someone makes a game that's not for kids due to heavy themes, that means they have to see adult content when they go to the site. Especially since I often use the laptop in public and some of those thumbnails are really NSFW.

Really loved this, Night in the Woods-esque but still doing its own thing, and set in Norway to boot.

I guess the best advice I can give you is watch and read fantasy. Pick up what works, look up words that you don't understand. You'll discover what works and what doesn't, and as you write you'll develop your own style :) .

Also, "writers write". Just make your game, maybe don't worry so much about language, you can always come back to edit what you write later.

Hope that was helpful.

This one will sit with me for a while. Thank you for making this. Edit: Got a lot of thoughts but I think that if I try to share them it'll just end up being a wall of text, so I'll just say: Thank you for making this. I was inherently opposed to sex work before this due to knowing how many people who do it are SA survivors and this didn't exactly make me more positively inclined towards it.

Thanks, that looks really interesting, will give it a try for sure!

Hmm! First thought that occurs to me is, depending on your language you might want to simply write the game in your first language? If it's a big language like Spanish, you'll probably still have a lot of people interested in playing it. If it's a smaller language, you'll probably find people who appreciate playing a game in their own language.

In a pinch, I suppose you could write it in your own language first and then use AI or something to translate it, but that sounds risky, AI sometimes makes mistakes and translates things in a really 'direct' way.

Also, maybe don't worry about using specific words or 'big' words. Often the way you write naturally is more than good enough!

Either way, good luck!

Really interesting! Not quite what I was looking for, but thanks for the reply!
edit: btw, really interesting premise for a game!

Since you're asking for input --I love slice-of-life RPGs that are set in some real location and not only have a plot in themselves, but which also tell the story of that location. Games like Embracelet, Norco, and Night in the Woods. Admittedly, two of those are in fictional towns, but they still tell the story of real places, if only indirectly. So many peoples' and places' stories could be explored this way.

Honestly, though, if you're creating a game, the best choice should probably be what you're the most inspired to make yourself :) .

Oh my god I loved this so much, you really nailed the atmosphere and beating it really felt like an achievement! Again, loved it so much!

It clearly means generative AI like Midjourney and ChatGPT. 

So, I may or may not be working on a game where one of the main characters is a sexual assault survivor and dealing with its after-effects, and I'm just wondering if you know of other games that touch upon this topic? Like, not just by having a character who happens to be a survivor, but where the story actually describes and explores what it's like to be dealing with SA trauma. I know Life is Strange has a subplot where one of the characters (not naming names so as not to spoil anything) confides she has been drugged at a party and taken advantage of, and I think Silent Hill 2 has a sequence that heavily implies that what one of the characters is dealing was caused by her being abused as a child, but that's the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I know there are games that deal more generally with trauma, like Celeste, but do people know of games dealing more specifically with the after-effects of sexual assault?

As a side question, anyone remember the name of that RPG Maker (?) game where you go into a haunted house because you left your scarf there (at least that's how I remember it), and it has these reassuring messages in green text like "You couldn't have known" and "It wasn't your fault"? It was really popular when it came out but now I can't remember what it was called.

Note: I guess this is obvious, but just in case, I'm not after gross 'adult' games or edgy games making fun of SA/survivors.

Edit: Just came across https://itch.io/t/11699/mental-health-in-games-resource-list cataloguing games and resources about mental health, so I'll just drop the link here.

Radio silence II

Okay, so both of my midsemester exams are done, but of course my gaming (and game-development) laptop decided to die on me just as I got free time to relax and start working on the game at a higher pace again.

Despite this, work has still been progressing --there are plenty scenes left to write and it's a really creative project, so I'm constantly taking photos, writing and brainstorming scenes and little moments and lines in the game, and doing other things that I don't need articy or Unity for, now that the main laptop has to be sent off for repairs. 

I also reached a new milestone recently when I let a good friend of mine play through the first 15-20 minutes or so of the game and she loved it, so that was really inspirational. It feels good to be at the point where I have a game to actually show people.

Finally, I'm playing with the idea of a new gameplay feature that will probably be the subject of the next devlog. Eventually.

Either way, that's pretty much what I have right now, looking forward to when I can start doing regular updates again. Take care!

Sorry about the radio silence...

Okay, so I promised bi-weekly updates and now it's 23 days since the last update. This thread has even fallen to the fourth page, which is embarrassing. Mea culpa.

Okay, so first of all, porting to Unity (from articy:draft X) is proving trickier than expected, while the start of the pretty hectic final semester of my geography bachelor studies means I have less free time. I'm continuing to trudge away at this project behind the scenes, though, and I'll update you when I've made real progress. I'm looking forward to have some of the scenes of the game in a playable demo state to start showing to people, though.

To whoever is following me and this game, don't worry, SPIRIT is not dead, it's just that sometimes real-life gets in the way.

Devlog 6: Brainstorming names and logos

Okay, so I wasn't going to post another devlog until the planned one about my ongoing struggles to port the game to Unity procastinate as I try to keep up with curriculum now that the semester has started,  but I fired up Canva tonight to experiment with logos, trying to find a design that conveyed the feel and themes of the game, and I thought it'd be fun to share them. Consider this a bonus devlog, I guess.

Without further ado:

Note that none of this is set in stone –I'm trying to come up with more possible names, and I might just settle on SPIRIT even though it's kinda nondescript and there are lots of games are already called that. Either way, if you have thoughts feel free to share them, otherwise I'll see you on the next one. Stay safe!

It's the YouTube effect, I guess. It's amazing to live in a time where it's become trivially easy for people to make and upload works, but the downside is that you'll have to wade through lots of... Perfectly ordinary content with a strong 'homemade' feel to it. I don't know if I can call this good or bad, first and foremost it's a result of creativity being really democratic, for lack of a better word.

Thinking about it, I think there's a niche for whoever interested to be a kind of 'curator' who plays games and makes videos or forum posts recommending games. Unless there are already, I wouldn't know, I haven't been here long.

btw, congrats on getting it on Steam

Love this so much. I never played a Castlevania game except on modern-day emulators, but this still made me nostalgic for the SNES/486 days. Great work! Love the music too!

Love this so much, I find myself opening this and running around in Babbdi when I need something to chill with.
Gotta try the FPS game too (Straftat or whatever it was). Excellent job.

I guess that's just one of the disadvantages with a big site like itch.io, your works can drown in all the other content out there. I had the same experience when I signed up for the GMTK game jam, I made a game I'm proud of, and I felt it didn't get the attention it deserved because there were just so many thousands of other (really good) games out there.

I guess just keep trucking and making stuff, eventually you'll probably make a name for yourself. Also it helps to promote yourself in various (non-intrusive) ways. I really like your style, by the way. If it fit the mood of the game I was making I'd gladly use your assets.

Devlog 5: Making the mundane fun

So, I've written before about how this is proving to be a challenging game to write. SPIRIT is a slice-of-life story about 20-year-old uni student and knowing that I'm going to have to make everyday situations like lectures and group work sessions fun and engaging has been incredibly intimidating. So, I thought I might as well write a devlog on this --how do you make the mundane interesting and fun? I lean on these three principles:

1. Throw some actual gameplay in. Skill checks, maybe some minigames. Make the lectures, group works, and other mundane tasks a kind of puzzles, that the player has to solve. I'll also do my best to make the gameplay open-ended, so that there are multiple ways to 'attack' each problem.

2. Sprinkle in constant interesting tidbits of information --geography can be dry at times, but there's also countless fun facts and engaging topics, and much of it ties into discussions and issues that affect all of us, every day.

3. Let Hanna be Hanna. Give the player room to distract themselves, be a total clown, or just simply screw up, often in unexpected ways. Even if you do your best to be a model student, you should expect failure and comedy. As a side note, I'm working to make humour in the mundane a constant throughout the game.

For example, I've almost finished a pretty big and complex part where you attend a mandatory seminar and you have to research moraines with your group. You can choose to get right to work, but you can also waste time checking social media or browsing the Internet, and since you're tired on the day of the seminar, you will have to pass skill checks to actually concentrate on your work, enticing players to explore other options. Between the different approaches, skill checks, and interactions with your group members (with ample characterization and room for humour), there will be plenty of different ways to play through this part of the game, not to mention ways to sabotage yourself, intentionally or unintentionally. 

Of course, student life isn't all lectures, seminar, study lab sessions, and group work (and if you're a student and that is your student life, you're doing it wrong). SPIRIT will offer all kinds of free-time activities with the gang, with engaging stories, dilemmas, mini-games, and, at times, important topics to discuss.

Note: Devlogs will be bi-weekly from here on. Hopefully by the next one I will have integrated the game with Unity and actual ingame screenshots to show you. Stay tuned!

Devlog 4: Locations and Research

Welcome to this third devlog, where I'm going to talk about how I decide where in the city the various scenes of the game will play out, which is turning out to be quite the undertaking. Keep in mind this is all WIP,  I haven't decided which shots to use or even if I'm going to use the actual photos (probably with a filter applied) or maybe try to trace them or even draw my own scenes from scratch.

Even when I've selected a location in the city, such as the neighbourhood in this devlog, that's just the beginning. SPIRIT is going to be a NORCO-style point-and-click game, and so it needs 2D scenes for the player to visit and interact with. In a city as beautiful as Bergen, there's a lot to choose from, and each of them has to be interesting to the player to spend time in. I've come to realize I should use the location of Bergen to the fullest, so I want to really show off some beautiful spots.

For example, here's a WIP articy:Draft X shot of Skuteviken, where the protagonist Hanna Sofie lives with their flatmates:

When trying to decide on what exact places to use, I first visit the location, taking lots of photos before trying to piece them together into sets of gameplay scenes when I get home. What complicates things is that a location doesn't just need to stand out, look good, or be a significant place in some way, it also has to work gameplay-wise: Could a certain scene be used as an overview shot? Does it tell the player anything about the location, characters, or even Bergen as a whole? How does it fit into the overarching story? What's going to happen there? What interesting things are there for you to click on to learn about? 

So if I for example want to use a shot of a really nice-looking alleyway, could I for example decide that one of the characters in the story lives there? Could I have a funny conversation or some characterization take place there? If there are NPCs there, what are they going to be like and what will they say? I try to avoid putting in things that feel like  'filler' content, so every shot needs to have a purpose.

Here's an example of a screen that clearly has a lot going on, and is also a nice entry point into the neighbourhood:

There's also some few other things to think about. I like to have locations be visible from each other so that the player don't get too disoriented. I plan to have ingame maps you can consult, but having reference points should make the player feel less disoriented and make the city feel more cohesive, and less like just travelling between random unrelated locations.

Here's two possible screens showing first a view of a playground and fortress wall you can visit, and a street that you'll be travelling down, with the 'Carlsen på taket' business as a reference. The second shot is a possible street scene where you're standing next to said business:

I also considered having the mountains in the background in every shot, to keep reminding the player that Bergen is a small town surrounded by mountains, but I quickly realized this would be incredibly hard, so now you just see them... As often as possible, I guess? Oh, and finally locations have to be limited in number, because while I want to show off beautiful places, but I also don't have to have too many 'filler' scenes where little if anything happens.

A handful of the many locations on the 'cutting board' that I'm considering using.

Another challenge is the shifting seasons. I have only so much time to grab shots of a certain season, and once the leaves have started to change colour, for example, whatever new shots I take will preferably have to line up with those I shot in summer! Then if I want more shots of a given site in a given season, I will have to wait a whole year. For example, here's two shots of the same scene in summer and autumn:

That's all for this dev post, hope you enjoyed these thoughts on how to put the sights of Bergen into an RPG!

Devlog 3: Meet the gang

In this devlog I'll talk about the game's main characters, both inside and outside your head –you have the three main characters that make up your flatshare and five so-called Primary Skills, which are various aspects of your personality that will make up your inner monologue and help you overcome challenges related to them. For example, reading between the lines when someone talks to you might require you to pass a Heart check. To veterans from Disco Elysium, this concept will be familiar to you. In addition to the primary skills, there's also attributes like fitness and awareness, but they will mostly be shaped by ingame actions rather than skill points, and they will not directly talk to you. 

H&M + Nora: The flatshare

Hanna Sofie Fjøra
The game's chaotic hero –or antihero, depending on your approach, Hanna is a Sogndal expat* who is retaking the first uni year. At this point in development she's a bit of a blank slate, and since she's the main character, maybe to some degree she will stay that way. I will probably end up giving her a lot more characterization, though.

Maja Solvik
Your childhood friend from Sogndal, Maja is a 'busy bee' with lots of balls in the air, and the most 'grown-up' member of the trio. You moved to Bergen together to study geography, but since she didn't spend all of her first year drinking and partying, she's now a year ahead of you. She seems to have her whole life in order and starts every day with a morning run, and in the afternoons she can often be found on the couch with her Macbook and a mug of tea. You and Maja go way back, and she'll be your biggest supporter throughout the game.

Nora Bjerkan
Nora is your second flatmate and your closest geography classmate. A true nature lover who frequently goes on hikes and camping trips, and takes responsibility for buying and tending to the apartment's many plants and flowers. I can't quite decide if she's going to be an old friend or someone Hanna and/or Maja got to know and grew close with during their first year. Maybe she studied something else last year and got to know the others through some student organization?  Either way, given she's the one who will have to endure your antics during lectures and group work sessions, she has plenty reason to be frustrated with you, and you will have to work to earn her respect.

Primary skills
These are your primary skills, as presented in the game when you assign skill points. I might add more skills if I see the need, but I really doubt I'll remove any of them as I'm increasingly growing attached to them.

Butterfly
Get out in the world. Chase those endorphins.
GOOD FOR: Happy-go-lucky party girls, university students who still want a social life, drunken wildcats

Butterfly is that all-important part of your brain that is there to remind you to put your textbook down, let those dirty dishes wait, and get out in the world and live a little. High-level Butterfly is your drive for unforgettable nights with friends, late-evening university events (often with free pizza), and those all-important treks up rainy mountains. You'll constantly be chasing another dose of endorphins and those elusive Memories For Life. On low Butterfly, it will be easier to be a focused, mature student on top of your coursework, but you might just find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over in study hall, having just passed up a trip to the park that would probably have cleared your head. Is that really the university life you want to remember?

Heart
Tune in to unspoken language. Be a people person.
GOOD FOR: Valued friends, good listeners, social animals.

Heart is your ability to read and empathize with your fellow human beings, and to quickly process what's thrown at you in conversations. On high Heart, you'll notice that subtle body language and those slight shifts in tone of voice. You'll be able to read between the lines and realize when your friend is trying to tell you something, or that the person explaining themselves to you is lying. On low Heart, you will tend to take things at face value. Social cues and subtle hints will fly high over your head, and you may miss those all-important red flags that indicate someone doesn't have your best interests at heart.

Hippocampus
Understand nature and society. Be an academic weapon
GOOD FOR: Book worms, walking encyclopaedias, ambitious university students

Hippocampus is your accumulated knowledge from textbooks, nature documentaries, and the lectures you actually went to last year. On high Hippocampus, you'll come prepared, able to chase those As and Bs and be a valuable member of group projects rather than a constant source of irritation. On Low Hippocampus, you'll have to work harder to find information when you need it, and you will have to work harder to put two and two together.

(I'm not sure how well it comes across, but it's meant to be a girl looking at her younger self in the mirror.)

Reflection
Retrace your footsteps. Look at the big picture.
GOOD FOR: Thoughtful girls, wise friends, young adults stuck in the past. Also (inversely) determines Awareness.

Recollections and wisdom, ever-churning thought processes. With high Reflection, you'll be constantly going through old memories in your mind. Everything will take you back, and you'll constantly be reflecting on those old experiences. You will be able to analyze your past and learn from it, but you may find yourself easily distracted, endlessly mulling over that party, those rejections, and what you said to that poor woman on the bus that day. On low Reflection, you'll be living in the moment. You won't as easily connect the dots and relate to your past, but you will notice things around you that may be missed by those with their heads in the clouds.

Spirit
Get back up. Stay on top of life.
GOOD FOR: Strong girls, fighters, survivors. Also determines maximum Sanity.

Spirit's got your back. She's your life experience, coping skills, ever-present guardian, and loyal buddy, always there with advice and a pat on the shoulder. More than anything, however, Spirit is your rationality and self-restraint, always there to keep you safe. On high Spirit, you'll brush off setbacks and embarrassments that would reduce lesser people to tears and weather storms with flying colours, but you'll also be constantly second-guessing yourself. Should you think things over one more time before you chat up that cute student after the seminar? Are you sure your resume is good enough, or should you go over it again? On low Spirit, you'll be throwing yourself at life like a drunken wildcat, but there will be no one to hold your hand when things get bad. And then how will you make it through the day?

*Bergen has such a multicultural heritage from when it was a Hansa League city that its inhabitants still boast today that 'they're not from Norway, they're from Bergen'.

Welcome to devlog 2, where I'll be talking about the setting and inspirations for the game, and also show off some artwork.

So I’m in my third year of my geography bachelor, and I’ve studied social work for one and a half years before that. It’s been four years of lectures, reading, group work, all kinds of exciting school projects, meeting and hanging out with wonderful people, parties, and of course, various personal hardships, both my own and those of my friends and classmates. Somewhere down the road of my geography studies, during a particularly gruelling group project, it dawned on me that higher education could make for a great wacky slice-of-life game setting, which could play with all kinds of character types, situations, and topics. I had played through Disco Elysium several times by then, and slowly, the idea of making an actual Disco Elysium-esque RPG set to the university I attended took form. 

Keep in mind, though, that while Spirit takes place at the University of Bergen, you won't find any of the university's students or faculty members in the game, nor is it an 'autobiography' of my time there, nor of my time at the college in Sogndal –all the game characters are made from scratch, so to speak, and I also haven't put real-life events in the game.

I wanted it to have Disco Elysium’s deep and distinct characters, branching dialogue and storyline, and ‘skills’ that talk to you in an internal monologue, and NORCO's 2D point-and-click system and maybe mind map. Also, I love games that are tied to a particular place the developers have a clear connection to, like Embracelet, NORCO, and Tchia, and so Spirit will be deeply rooted in my hometown of Bergen. A nearly thousand year-old beautiful and quaint town, with iconic mountains and fjord views, picturesque houses, a unique and distinct culture (to the point where its people will say they're not from Norway, but from Bergen), this city is almost a character in itself. Nost importantly, though, it has a big and lively student community, with people from all over the world and a wide range of facultues. Oh, and it also happens to be the rainiest city in Europe –not too many years ago we had three months straight of rainy days. However, since I also fell in love with Sogndal when I studied there, it felt fitting to make the main character come from there, as a kind of homage, if nothing else.

Above: An experiment with a photo filter.

The three main characters are Hanna, Maja, and Nora, who live together in a kollektiv, or flatshare, in downtown Bergen, and your skills, which form your inner monologue and help you overcome challenges, are Spirit, Butterfly, Heart, Reflection, and Hippocampus. I'll cover the gang and your skills in more detail in a future devlog.

As I mentioned, I’m currently using actual photos for scene backgrounds, while I use Midjourney to populate the scenes as well as for character portraits, and I’m pretty happy with the ones I have right now, even though several of the skill portraits need a bit more work. Here are some designs I've been considering  (please see the first dev log for my thoughts on the ethics of AI art generators):

Spirit.

Maja. 

Butterfly. 

Heart.

For the user interface, I drew inspiration from both NORCO and Disco Elysium. You’ll have an inventory with items, and I’m borrowing the dialogue sidebar from games like Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Disco, and NORCO. I also want the writing to be part dialogue, part narration, so things like the world around you, facial expressions, and body language will be described along with speech.

All in all, there are two major challenges right now. The first is writing out the full story I have in mind, with all the required scenes and interactions, all the while keeping it interesting and engaging. Spirit is a point-and-click RPG with few gameplay mechanics, which means the writing and story have to carry the game, and writing a slice-of-life game is essentially hard since you have to keep depictions of (mostly) ordinary everyday situations interesting and engaging! It's an exciting challenge, though, even though it's daunting, and so far I feel I'm pulling it off, and the story is also a nice mix of the whimsical and the deeply serious. The second challenge will be putting it all into Unity. Working out how to make a simple 2D point-and-click game has been manageable so far, and Articy comes with the ability to export dialogue to Unity, which is a huge time-saver. I'll keep working and learning and I'm looking forward to seeing it all start to come together. Eventually.

Beautiful.

So I'm feeling this has progressed enough that I'm sort of kinda ready to start talking about it. Introducing (working title) SPIRIT, a slice-of-life game about Hanna Sofie, a chaotic 20-year old university student in the Norwegian city of Bergen.

So I'm making a game. Or, just as accurately, I'm learning how to make a game. I recently fell in love with Disco Elysium and its deep, branching storyline, and as a geography uni student (and former social work college student), I've found student life gives me so much inspiration for stories, satire, and topics to cover in general, so that's where I started off: A slice-of-life Disco Elysium-style game about a chaotic main character with 'skills' that speak to them inside their head. My goal is that SPIRIT will be funny, satirical, and poignant, with a branching storyline, optional 'side-quest' storylines like in Night in the Woods, and with its character relations and storyline evolving with your decisions, like in Disco Elysium. Expect humor, memorable scenes, and a meaningful storyline, covering important topics both related and not related to uni life.

Now, I can't use any game engines besides the humble RPG Maker, which I used to make a GMTK Game jam game, but which I've outgrown since then, but I'm certain I'll be able to make a simple 2D point and click game in Unity. I can make a simple point-and-click game in Unity. That's pretty simple, right? Either way, I figured I would start by writing dialogue and some basic scripting in articy:draft X, which makes it a breeze to make branching storylines and dialogue that change with your actions (in fact, this is the tool ZA/UM used to write the 1.2 million  (!) word beast that is Disco Elysium). What's also super helpful about Articy is that it also allows you to 'play' your game, dialogue choices and all, within its engine, in a PowerPoint presentation-esque user interface. Behold:

Either way, after spending the better part of a year writing out scenes in Articy, I found my confidence growing that this could actually evolve into a game, and I'm also finding that it's growing into its own thing, despite the initial heavy inspiration from from Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods, Embracelet, and NORCO. Much like in Disco and NITW, however, my protagonist definitely also has her own inner demons to wrestle with, though, and much like in Disco, it’s up to you if you want a redemption story or if you just want to run wild for a semester.

So that is where the project stands right now. At the time of writing, I've written some 17 000 words, or about 35 pages, of dialogue in Articy and I'm making progress in learning basic programming. For graphics I think I'll end up using photos I take of the beautiful real-life locations of Bergen, possibly with a filter and some animations applied to them, and I'll use Midjourney for character graphics.  More on this in dev post 3.

As a side note, for anyone else interested in dipping their toes into Unity, I recommend GMTK's  excellent Unity Tutorial for Complete Beginners, which takes you through the steps of coding Flappy Birds while teaching you the basics of Unity, all in the course of a single video. 

A quick note on AI generated content: I respect and fully understand professional artists who dislike AI generated art, but I ask for understanding that as a uni student I've got nowhere near the money I'd need to hire professional artists, and I don't have the time or skills to create my own art assets. Maybe in some rosy future where the game has been released and really taken off, and where I've also landed a full-time job, I'll be able to do a Kickstarter and hire artists, but for now, AI art is what enables me to make this game. By the way, anyone who wants a solid defence of AI generated content can watch Austin McConnell's excellent video. He says all this better than I ever could.

Either way, I'm glad work is finally underway and that SPIRIT has gotten to the point where I can start talking about it. Hopefully putting it out there will give me encouragement to keep making progress.

Devlogs 2 and 3 are already on the project page. I'll probably add devlogs here weekly or bi-weekly (starting with 2-3 and a couple more I've already written), or whenever I actually have stuff to write about. We'll see.

Working title SPIRIT

A slice-of-life game about a chaotic university student

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• SPIRIT Devlog 3: Meet the gang33 days ago
• SPIRIT Devlog 2: Inspirations and art direction

I think I would prefer if devlogs were automatically also put in this forum when you posted them. Or at least there could be a checkbox you could tick.

Alternatively (just brainstorming here), make it so that when I post a devlog, have a thread be generated here with either the full devlog or an except, and a link to the actual devlog on the project page where people can add comments and whatnot. The except would be written by the poster (have a separate textbook labeled Excerpt) or just be the first x words or whatever.

Also I like the idea of curated devlogs.

I would kind of like that, too, but at the same time I think AI is going to be so normalized over time so that it won't really matter in the long run. I'll just tag my game as having AI-generated art and if some people don't want to download it for that reason, I guess I respect them for that.

What I'm looking forward to is GPT-style functionality that would allow me to have actual, open conversations with characters in a game, rather than having to pick from pre-selected options (although that certainly has its place as well). Would be so much fun if done well.

Tried replying directly to Hughes and got an error message for some reason.

Fair enough. I'm considering trying my hand at tracing photos of the places I'm taking photos of and seeing if I can make backgrounds that way (unless I just slap filters on the photos and call it a day), but drawing people? I think that's too high a hurdle for me, thank you. Also there's the slight issue that I want my game to actually be done at some point. So far I've written 20 000 words (or roughly 44 pages) of dialogue and narration and I've only covered a fraction of the scenes I'm planning to make. If/when the game is done, it'll probably be novel-length in terms of narration/dialogue. Then there's all the time to spend coding, testing, bug fixing, taking photos of locations, etc. Learning to draw people on top of that sounds unrealistic, to say the least.

Sure, you could say people should work around their limitations, but I'd rather my game looks good. And I mean, I'll also be sourcing my music from others, probably a combination of free and licensed works, yet I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for not trying to make my own music, you know?  To be frank, I don't understand why the moment we talk of AI, suddenly there's this expectation that creators are supposed to do everything ourselves, or gatekeep creativity by saying it has to be done a certain way, otherwise it shouldn't be done at all.

Also, see the vid by Austin that I linked to.

It can be used and abused like any tool. Personally, I wouldn't be able to make the slice-of-life RPG I'm working on right now without AI-generated art. I don't have the artistic experience to make the assets I need myself, I don't have the money to hire artists (who thus aren't missing out on work anyway), and I doubt there's free art assets that fit what I need for the game. If my game miraculously takes off, I'd love nothing more than start a Kickstarter to raise money to hire artists who could replicate the ingame art from Midjourney, but as it is, on a student budget and making a freeware game, it's a pretty big ask to hire professionals to do the art for me.

tl;dr, it's a bit black-and-white to claim AI hurts artists when I literally couldn't have made the game I've dreamt of making for a long time without the assistance of AI. Again, all AI generators are tools that can be used or abused, they're not inherently good or bad.

I really liked Austin McConnell's take after he received a lot of criticism for using AI-generated art and voices in a video he made.

Also feel it's grasping at straws to use AI-generated articles on WP as an argument against AI-generated assets in games.

Yeah, I think it's too simplistic to just have a binary "AI Generated" or "not AI Generated" toggle. There's a big difference between using AI to generate most/all of your game and just using it for help with code, the occassional feedback on writing, or for some of the art assets, for example. 

I hope not.

I can't believe articy:Draft X doesn't seem to have been mentioned here. I'm making an RPG with Disco Elysium-style branching dialogue and articy is a godsend, especially if you're writing games with open-ended, branching stories.

articy lets you write dialogue and plot timelines by means of a 'flowchart' simply called the flow, where you can also do simple scripting by attaching code to flow items, and also comes with a database to help you keep track of documents, images, music, locations, people, items, etc. (which can also be tied to modules in the flow). Best of all, you can export your project directly to Unity or Unreal.

Like any tool it can be used or abused. I'm making an RPG and I wouldn't be able to do so without AI-generated art. As you say, there's slop and lazy content, too, but just saying that AI hurts indie devs is painting with way too broad a brush, imho.

Oh my god, this is so good.