Fiction Factory Games

Quick Update

No blog post this week. I was really low energy today and couldn't think of anything interesting to talk about. Didn't get much development done either.

But the good news is is that the writing for the game is complete, most of the visual effects work is done, and at this point we're just waiting on a few backgrounds and some voice processing I need to do. Also a handful of odds and ends for user interfaces and Animations.

Still no release date, I need to pick one that's going to ...

It Is Wednesday: Endgame(s)

Industry continues to be a mess, so this week, let's talk game design theory -- and also give you an update on The Shadow Over Cyberspace.

While waiting for the last background art to come in, I've been busy writing all 15 endings. "What the-- fifteen endings!?" you might be saying. And it's true! Because we need distinct writing for all of these variations:

• 4 Solo Endings: Niara, Hector, Aza-chan, Yosuke (with "pulled back from the brink" vs. "gave in to temptation" on ea...

  2024-09-25 17:33:19 +0000 UTC View Post

It Is Wednesday: Positive Perspectives

The driving narrative for the game industry as of late has been one of collapse. Major studios that built up big to capitalize on COVID-19 are now shrinking down, firing people, sinking projects on the weight of unrealistic expectations and trend chasing, and generally things look grim. We're seeing another crash akin to the 1983 Atari Gluttony Crash. All is death. All is despair.

So how do we find anything positive in this mess?

To me, positivity isn't really about trends, becaus...

It Is Wednesday: The Seven Hundred Club

Seven hundred dollars.

Seven. Hundred. Dollars. For a mid-gen refresh that nudges already-pretty graphics up to slightly-prettier, for a few particular games. Seven hundred dollars for the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Last night, I posted to all my socials that for seven hundred dollars, I could fund independent artists to make game assets and pass that value forward to the people who play the resulting game... and that it'd work just fine on a system that costs less than seven hundred doll...

Quick Note

I'm working on the ending sequence now, where are you select your ally or allies and then see the repercussions of that decision.

We're looking at about 15 endings, with two variations on four of them. One for each of the four gods, one for every possible combination of two of them, one for every combination of three, and one for all four. Also variations on the four solo endings if you encouraged them to go with their worst impulses.

I could probably get away with writing some p...

It Is Wednesday: Bad Year Blimp

Welcome back to It Is Wednesday, the very literally titled weekly column to ensure you're getting your five bucks worth outta the Patreon. In this blog I'll be discussing the game industry as a whole and narrative game design ideas.

2024 has sucked for me personally and for the game industry. If you'll forgive the doom and gloom let's do a short recap of only a few highlights in a nine month period of egg-sucking depression.

Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. Studios that fail ge...

It Is Wednesday: Let's Talk About Concord

EDIT: Wednesday! It's Wednesday, not Tuesday. I can't believe I screwed that up.

When I started this Patreon, I promised weekly blog posts about game design or the game industry in general. I haven't lived up to that. I've delivered on game betas, sure, but not everybody is backing at the beta tier and I wanna make sure everybody's getting something out of this.

So, I'm making it a rule -- every Wednesday I'll do a blog post with my thoughts on a game, or the industry, or...

Alpha Release 05 - Yog-Sothoth

Behold! A new alpha! And only one month after the last one! It's like I'm actually making progress!

The google doc with the download link and testing notes and error log is here.

With this, the story is now complete up to the finale -- I still need to write the actual gathering of the Old Ones to confront Cthulhu. It's functional thanks to a whole lot of pla...

Yog Beta Incoming

I need to go through the last testing sheet and work out any reported bugs, but otherwise Yog-Sothoth is done and ready to go. I'll be releasing a beta soon.

Good news about the 'video glitch' bug I asked folks to look out for -- turns out it was just my NVidia driver. Upgrading it to the latest version made the bug go away. I think it may have been a general NVidia OpenGL problem, since it was affecting ALL Renpy games, not just Shadow. Like, I booted up Slay the Princess and it was ha...

Quick Update

I finished writing the scenes for Yog-Sothoth! Next I need to do an editing pass to make sure that everything is consistent and I'm not being too repetitive. I'm getting a little worried that the dialogue in the game is kind of rambling and repetitive for the sake of padding out a scene. That's something I'm going to be keeping an eye on.

After that, I need to do a testing to explore every branch and make sure that nothing causes a crash. And then we should have a new beta update. So i...

A Year of Crime: Penny Larceny's Anniversary

(Setting this blog post free for all! If you'd like to join the Patreon and help fund our next project, drop a few coins in the box.)

Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain was a labor of love. My chance to self-publish a project near and dear to me, something with satire and comedy and heart and something to say about the world we live in. It was a gameplay experiment into making something short but very replayable, where you have a very different relationship to the main cha...

Beta 04 Now Available

I'm still a bit concerned about the video glitch and crash I experienced but I'm gonna get the next beta going anyway. Maybe see if it's just me or if you're experiencing issues too. I've left the CRT filter in place so please play with retro effects on and keep an eye out for single-frame black screens and glitches.

That dire warning out of the way... testing notes and build download link are here:
2024-07-25 17:35:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Quick Question on the CRT Filter

Running into a weird bug where the screen flickers now and then while I'm playing the game, and last night when I was testing a website the game crashed out right and put my video card in a weird state. Wondering if the CRT filter for the desktop computer, the one with the rounded Edges and scan lines , destabilizing the engine. That's on top of it making the pixel text harder to read in general.

So I'm thinking about getting rid of that filter. I'll keep the LCD filter for the laptop c...

Next Beta Soon

So after doing about 75% of Cthulhu's voice lines, I discovered some new tools and techniques for cleaning up the audio. That's good, but it means I need to completely redo all those voice lines, filtering and exporting them and selecting the takes all over again.

I'd rather not hold up the game for that so I'm going to get the Azathoth beta release ready for download sometime this week.

This game is definitely proving to be a slower grind than I thought it would be, because of he...

Progress Update

I got a lot of work done on the game this weekend -- being able to spend my few sitting hours on game dev instead of day job helps a lot. Sadly my disability retirement has been pushed off, probably 150 days out at this point, so things may stay a bit slow. Bleh. But! Progress is Progress.

I've tested Azathoth's scenes, start to finish, all branches. Only ran into one bug when I used "player" instead of "you" for the main character's dialogue and RenPy panicked. I've done my editing pas...

Azathoth is DONE.

All Azathoth scenes are finished.

I still have editing passes to do, and playtesting. And I want to finish getting Cthulhu's voice acting in the game before I package up a new beta...

But we're getting there. The hardest part is done.

After this, it's on to Yog-Sothoth. After that, the final rallying before the battle. And then the writing's done.

I can't say the game'll be out SOON. We still have a lot of background art missing and I have a laundry list of visual effe...

Semi-Quick Update

Three of the five Azathoth scenes are done. I managed to find an angle on one of them to keep it from being yet another diatribe against all the things that she believes in. Like, obviously you need to talk her out of supporting Cthulhu's plan, but if you just keep hitting that over and over again it's not very interesting.

I'm thinking of doing a general pass-through the story to emphasize that yes, Cthulhu is very obviously a metaphor for things like project 2025. I think it should b...

Unlocking Aza-chan

So the main writing block I've been having is that I just don't like Azathoth. I don't like 4chan apologists who refuse to see the hateful rhetoric of anonymous groups as "just jokes bro." It drives me up a wall.

But at the same time, the fact that it drives me up a wall makes it high octane rocket fuel for this examination of the societal ills of the 21st century, and where they're rooted. So... what now?

I think I figured out the trick -- make Aza-chan a reluctant participan...