Deirdra Kiai Productions

Deliberately Monochrome

Deirdra — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 06:40:00 +0000

Here’s a current screenshot of the first scene of my stop motion musical point-and-click adventure game-in-progress.

I wasn’t originally planning on making the game black and white, but after doing some art tests, I decided to try it out. I’m pretty happy with the results, and I haven’t used B&W in a game since Cubert Badbone, so the style’s definitely going to stay. Gives it a neat classic movie feel, don’t you think?

Anyway, I’m hoping to get some music and singing into the game soon so I can see how it all fits together. I have some super primitive automatic lipsyncing implemented for characters (ganked from this tutorial) through which I ran some test sound clips, and so far, it’s looking pretty good. For the game engine as a whole, I’ve been taking a little inspiration from Quinn Stephens’s open source ALPACA engine — I was originally thinking of using said engine, but then found there was so much weird custom functionality I wanted, not to mention built-in stuff I didn’t need, that I found it easier just to start over from scratch. Good thing my AS3 skills are half decent, right? [1]

Footnotes:

Yes, that’s right, I’m doing this project in Flash. Don’t laugh at me. They say Flash is dying, but really, they only mean for web browsers, and let’s face it, HTML5 audio just isn’t where I want it to be right now. And did you know that Flash can now export to iOS and other mobile/tablet devices? Will this mean I’m finally going to have a game in the App Store? We shall see! ↩

Some notes on “The Play”

Deirdra — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:21:42 +0000

First off, I’ve released a new game! It’s called “The Play”, and it’s a text-based interactive story about a theatre director trying to make sure a dress rehearsal doesn’t go horribly wrong. Except, well, there’s a bit more to it than that. Anyway, go play it if you haven’t already. It’s not very long to get through, and it even plays well with mobile devices! [1]

I also entered this game into the seventeenth annual Interactive Fiction Competition and it managed to win third place! Not bad for a first entry, or so I’m told. Squee!

Anyway, below the jump are some of my assorted spoileriffic thoughts on the game. Hello, sweetie!

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Footnotes:

Provided that said mobile devices are Javascript-enabled, that is. ↩

A musical adventure game… in stop motion?

Deirdra — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:32:29 +0000

Since my radio silence re: a certain new game of mine in a certain competition still isn’t over yet, I figure I ought to say something about another project I have in the works.

So, the thing is, ever since I played that one scene in Curse of Monkey Island, I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to do a whole game full of interactive musical numbers. I also always figured I’d never actually get around to doing one unless and until I had an AAA-sized budget, because, you know, doing an interactive Disney movie would add up and such. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about ways I could do an interactive musical on a shoestring budget, aiming less for Disney and more for, say, Colma: The Musical. Start small, build a proof of concept of sorts, then maybe pave my way to something bigger. That sort of thing.

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Signal Boosting: Bhaloidam

Deirdra — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:53:19 +0000

My good friend Corvus Elrod has a project on Kickstarter at the moment, seeking funding for his fabulous tabletop roleplaying system. Called “Bhaloidam”, which aptly derives from the Proto-Indo-European words for “story”, “play”, and “community” (and is just a damn cool name), its goal in a nutshell is to help people tell stories together. Plus, the handbook is being written as a comic book — how awesome is that? Anyway, you can find out more at the official website, and back the project here. [1]

As for my personal experiences with Bhaloidam, in the 2-3ish years I’ve known Corvus, I’ve played a handful of games in various iterations of the system, and had lots of fun every time. I’ve even co-designed a variant of the rules specifically for running dialogue-based games, as depicted in this here gameplay sample where you play as siblings at a funeral. Since Bhaloidam isn’t tied to a specific story, you can basically pick whatever subject matter you want; the rules are there to give your storytelling some structure and encourage an egalitarian mindset among players. Fierce advocate for social change that I am, this is a design philosophy I’m happy to get behind. I’m already thinking of some ideas for games of my own to run using the system, and look forward to playing them both in person and online.

Anyway, the funding deadline’s in exactly one week, so back the project now and help Corvus hit his funding goal. $9 gets you a digital version of the handbook, while larger amounts of money get you hard copies, game boards/pieces, guest appearances in the handbook, and even opportunities to get copies of the game out to kids’ charities. Definitely a good cause all around, I say.

Footnotes:

Corvus is even running online demos conducted via Google Plus hangouts, which I highly recommend checking out if you’re interested in seeing how it all comes together. ↩

I made a game for work!

Deirdra — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:34:42 +0000

In what appears to be somewhat of a departure from the narrative-heavy stuff I normally do, here’s a Flash game I worked on about… sieging castles! It was made for a neat-looking upcoming documentary TV series called Battle Castle, so quite a bit of historical accuracy and research went into the game — you can say it’s one of those “edutainment” thingies, in a sense. Anyway, check it out. I did the bulk of the game design and some of the programming, and now know way more about siege warfare than I’ll probably ever need to.

In other news, a more narrative-heavy project of mine has been entered in a certain annual competition, which, as an entrant, I have to keep mum about until next month or thereabouts. Another personal project, for which there is no reason not to talk about freely save for the fact that I’m a lazy blogger, is currently being poked away at, and I’ll be writing a separate post about it soon. Finally, GeekGirlCon‘s coming up in a week, and I’ll be doing some speaking there, so if you’re near Seattle on the 8th/9th, come see me and say hi!

Bird’s Eye View, Part Deux

Deirdra — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:28:01 +0000

Following last month’s post, here is the (tentatively) complete structure of my current work in progress, which has grown a bit longer and a bit more convoluted. [1]

Meanwhile, here’s a sneak peek at a completely different upcoming project, to further pique your interest.

Footnotes:

As with before, the text is deliberately shrunk down to an illegible size. ↩

Bird’s Eye View

Deirdra — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:14:07 +0000

This is what the structure of my current work in progress looks like right now. [1] Bear in mind that it’s only showing about half of the story so far; the rest has yet to be written.

Footnotes:

Created using a lovely online tool called bubbl.us. ↩

Lazy summer update…

Deirdra — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:15:30 +0000

Been a little quiet on this blog for the past month, mostly because I’ve been trying to spend my leisurely writing time focussed on the new Undum project. I’m having quite a bit of fun with that so far, and hopefully, I’ll meet my goal of finishing by the end of September.

In the meantime, con season is fast approaching. Next week, I’ll be attending the IGDA Summit in Seattle, and in October, I’ll be doing some speaking at GeekGirlCon. I’m definitely interested to see how both pan out!

Other than that… hmm, not a lot worth blogging about. I did get myself one of those newfangled Google Plus accounts, so feel free to join me there if you’re so inclined. I like it way better than Facebook, which really isn’t saying much, but there you go.

Shiny New Project

Deirdra — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:49:36 +0000

Rumour has it that I’m working on a new project in my spare time. Here’s what I’m willing to tell you about it at this point:

It’s being developed using the super nifty Undum framework for web-based hypertext interactive fiction.
It’s a reworking of an old game idea of mine that’s been in the back of my brain for ages. At one point about three years ago or so, it was going to exist in a different form with the help of a certain writer/artist friend of mine, but due to factors beyond my control, it didn’t wind up materialising.

Undum is pretty neat to play with so far. I wouldn’t recommend it for people who don’t like Javascript (at least not until friendlier tools get made) but it appeals to the tinkering type in me. It pretty much lets you do choose-your-own-adventure-with-stats games just like ChoiceScript, but does a very neat one-page layout with text appearing and disappearing from it that I quite enjoy. Brings about a feel that’s closer to parser IF, but without the, you know, typing and stuff, which is actually something I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I’ve never particularly loved parsers, [1] which likely stems from being about ten years too young for them and being more of a LucasArts kid than an Infocom kid, so I’m more than happy to ditch parsers entirely for a point-and-click [2] interface. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

In any case, I’m pretty happy to be in that mindset where I have something shiny and new to work on. It is a very good mindset, indeed.

Footnotes:

Come to think of it, I feel similarly about the parser as I do about pixel art: I can enjoy it when it’s done well, but it’s not something I feel I can fully own. ↩
Or as the case may be on some devices these days, swipe-and-tap. ↩

An Expensive Hobby

Deirdra — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:24:55 +0000

I don’t play very many of the latest and greatest video games. This, I’m a little sad to realise, puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to conversations held by most people in my circle of online acquaintances.

It’s the year 2011 and I still don’t own an XBox 360 or a PS3. I have a Wii, but these days, I pretty much only use it to stream Netflix movies to my TV. I have an iPhone, but I mostly wind up playing casual puzzle games on it. I haven’t bought an iPad yet and am in no hurry to do so. I have a Nintendo DS still lying around, and the last time I played anything on it was… last year, when the latest Ace Attorney game came out? The computers I have at home are a 3-year-old iMac and a netbook that runs Ubuntu. The former was all bright and shiny and new when I first got it, [1] and still works like a charm for just about everything except for new games — even Telltale’s latest offerings show their fair share of graphical glitches, and weren’t they supposed to be comparatively low-tech and aimed towards the more casual crowd?

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Footnotes:

Actually, it was refurbished, but still… ↩