The Dink Network

Shadows of Death

December 8th 2014, 03:25 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
I felt like this should be in a new topic. Deal with it.

So...this project has been on my mind ever since my previous update to the old topic back in June, but obviously my desire to actually work on it regularly has been non-existent since this time last year, when I last did major work on this. That doesn't mean I haven't actually worked on this since then. It just means I haven't done much. Most of what I've done is writing. Sometimes, random ideas would pop into my head at a time when I'm trying desperately to fall asleep, but my mind just races and ideas spawn. As a result, I have the entirety of the main story line figured out. I've also planned out most of the boss fights and what gimmicks they will have when fighting them. I will probably have my work cut out for me as some will be a real scripting challenge. I also have some of the side quests figured out, though I still need more to fill up each area of the D-mod with content since I'm going more toward the open world route. I've asked my real life friend to help me write some side quests, since his limited free time cannot help me actually make the D-mod itself, but it will help achieve the goal of making this D-mod truly epic.

Now, you may be wondering what inspired this new wave of interest in my project, but I highly doubt it. Well, about a week ago I experienced a "What the F@%! am I doing with my life?" crisis after realizing my educational goal was, well, reaching for the stars, and the classes were too much for me to handle. (Majoring in Physics with my primary interest in Astrophysics). I also realized that while I have a number of hobbies and interests, some of which I'm rather skilled at, and others not so much, I realized I didn't feel truly passionate about any of them, wanting to dedicate my existence to mastering it and trying to make a living with it. The same night I had this existential quandary, I tried thinking of things I do enjoy. One of the things to come to mind was writing. I have written a few stories in the past, though nothing spectacular, but it got me thinking about this one story idea I came up with a few years ago but never started on because of a different writing project I wanted to do first. When I'm not working on PS4 games or this D-mod, I plan on working on that story, and improving my writing skills and ability to create good character development. I think I'd really like to work on video games for a living, and what I'd be best at would be the writing. Working on these skills would help that idea become possible.

But back to the D-mod. That same night, I thought about this idea I had for one of the side quests about a beloved Dinker that I wanted to incorporate but had never figured out what to do with it. Well, the idea suddenly hit me, as they usually do at 4 AM, and I wrote the D-mods first fetch quest. Now, you may call me a hypocrite because I've said around this site numerous times that fetch quests suck duck nuts, but this will be optional and it will be more for the humor than anything else. After writing this out, I also knew that I still had no idea about what to do about other side quests I haven't written yet. Then yet another idea hits me. I should map out the rest of the over world so I can get an idea of what needs to be done and what areas need to be filled with content. So, today I finally got around to mapping. It's a bit barren, but it's more to help me do the writing than anything. The scripting and sprite detail will come later.

Before: Map as of June

After: Desert Area and Transition to Snowy Area mapped today, Dec 7

What really got me inspired to do the mapping, honestly, is I replayed this project. I found a few things that needed to be fixed, and I came up with some new ideas of things that really need to be added. I also had forgotten how funny I think I am. Tomorrow, I intend to map out the Snowy area completely, finishing the over world.

Something else I feel that I need to explain briefly. In the previous topic, I discussed about the possibility of partnership/turning this into a demo. Well, weeks after that discussion, I decided that if I was going to release anything, it would be nothing less than the completed D-mod. With that said, it's obvious that I'm going to miss my 2014 release window as I had originally intended, but I fully plan on heavily working on this again soon. As soon as I finish the mapping, I believe my first steps will be in finishing up this incomplete side quest I was working on in January to brush up on my scripting, and then I will work on some new enemy and item scripts that I should iron out sooner, rather than later.
December 8th 2014, 04:28 AM
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CocoMonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
Wow, that's a pretty big map you've got going there.

Trying to decide what you want to do with your life is hard, huh? I'm twenty-nine and I never have figured it out.
December 8th 2014, 07:22 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
I was bored, so I didn't wait until tomorrow. Technically. It did roll over to December 8th as I was working on this area.

Here is the Over World with the snowy area mapped out. It's a bit smaller but that's completely intentional, because immediately after you get through this area, there will be a huge castle dungeon.

@cocomonkey: Yeah, with the map I'm going big or going home. There will be a lot to do when it's completed. Hopefully I can finish it before you end you're write-ups, otherwise I'll have to force you to do so.

And I'm only 8 years behind you. I still have time to work out my life.

Note: I tried adding this to the original post, but it got to be too long. One of the most notable updates since June is that the 'The' was dropped from the D-mod title.
December 8th 2014, 08:01 AM
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ExDeathEvn
Peasant He/Him New Zealand rumble
"Skinny Legend" 
" It did roll over to December 8th as I was working on this area."

If it helps, it's now the 9th here in NZ.

The map from a distance looks quite neat, try not to forget the little details though.
If I may ask, why are there so many house buildings scattered like that in the snow area? I'm used to seeing towns where the buildings are closer together.
December 8th 2014, 08:14 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
In the snow area, it's actually, technically, two separate towns. To the south is the logging settlement of Snowvale, and up the cliff to the north is the bigger town of Solitude, which is the capital of this kingdom (which I'm yet to name). I haven't really created much of the back story yet, but I think I can assume that the people of Snowvale don't all get along with each other too well, so when they built their houses, they didn't want to be too close to each other. Also, for the most part these are place holders. I may change layouts later on to better fit whatever quests I implement into the areas. For example, I added a snowy forest into the area spontaneously, which evolved to include a frozen lake, and that opened up a huge range of possibilities of side quests which I can now come up with and put into the game.

I'm fully aware that I need to do the detail mapping. I just wanted the gist of each area to be created first so I had an idea of what I still need to write for each area.
December 8th 2014, 08:23 AM
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The snow area looks nice from a distance. "Smoothwood"
December 8th 2014, 08:30 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
I need to share this because it turned out almost exactly as I envisioned.

This is the path leading from Snowvale to Solitude. I used the dirt to simulate a rocky path, and while I didn't originally plan on the fences, they really made the screen look good. I will add more detail to this screen later, but the raw screen looks pretty awesome to me. The fence in the middle of the path will be invisible via a script.
December 8th 2014, 04:10 PM
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truthghost
Peasant He/Him United States
i am Ancient 
why cant we just use imgur

it's so much easier
December 9th 2014, 02:42 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
Today my goal was to come up with a list of all the main and side quests I currently had ideas for or already put into the game. Funnily enough, making this list spawned more ideas which I now plan on putting into the D-mod as well. I still want to put in a few more quests, but as of right now I already have quite a lot. Here are the current statistics:

Main Quests:
Grasslands: 7
Desert Wastes: 8
Frigid Mountains: 9
Final Area: 6

Side Quests:
Grasslands: 6
Desert Wastes: 6
Frigid Mountains: 6
Final Area: 0

It's a bit weird to put so much thought behind creating this D-mod, because I've never really planned something like this out before. Dink and the Bonca was done with absolutely no forethought, only a basic vision of what I wanted, unmodified from the original idea I had in 2005 and going for it in 2009. Planning everything out has made the writing a lot easier, which is odd for me. But doing the writing, actually thinking about what needs to happen, where Dink is going, and actually mapping the whole thing out first has paved the way for more naturally written quests to fit the areas, which I can only hope will make this mod stand out.

My next plan of action is to build a test D-mod for me to create and iron out tons of new scripts for enemies, spells, items, and other great stuff that I'm going to put into the game. I might post teaser screenshots if I get something really cool working
December 20th 2014, 09:32 AM
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
Well...motivation has been at an all time low because I've been pretty depressed trying to figure out where my life is going, or to be more accurate, where it isn't going. But I'm starting to work it out and finding where my true passions are. Sadly, they're not in game making/scripting, as I'm still really bad at it and really discouraged when I can't get something to work just right.

With that said, I have worked on a couple things in the last week or so. They're a few small things that will add variety to my D-mod.
-I've scripted a new type of classic Dink enemy that will keep you on your toes. Or freak you out. Either way, I win.
-A new, non-fire spell that successfully fails to burn down trees, but needs some fine tuning.
-A few new weapons have been scripted, and graphically work correctly
-I partially scripted another new enemy as well as a new puzzle sprite sequence, but both are unfinished and need major bug fixes
-A couple more ideas of gimmicks and quests that will be put into the game

In the grand scheme of things, this update is microscopic. With all these ideas I've come up with in the past few weeks, this is growing into one hell of an ambitious D-mod. The sheer size of everything has grown to a size far greater than my original concept of this D-mod and is slowly growing out of hand. Because of this, it will probably go the way of Necromancer, or The Dark Avilan, where it's in development for many years and never quite finished, or lost for all time. I really want to finish this but it will definitely take some time. I think in the next week I'll work on some simple quest scripting rather than this complex shit that's way over my head.

I apologize for using this topic more as a personal blog rather than a game development thread, but this is what's going on in my head lately and it's a constant struggle to find my motivation, but I'm working on it. I'm only human.