Reply to Re: Development jam: Modify the main game!
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First off, thanks for putting this altogether.
For me, modifying the original game, or another DMOD, is more approachable than starting a completely new one. A map and scripts already exist, so that is a huge advantage.
When it was first posted, my initial idea was just to replace ducks with Seths and have Dink fight a big duck at the end, but after playing through the original game, there was other stuff I wanted to adjust. Stuff that annoyed me, like Dink being visible to NPCs when he shouldn't be. Then, after redoing the mini-seths and adding the headless blood spurting versions I thought, hey, what if Dink could behead any NPC, how would that work? Could I switch brains on attack? What sort of weapon would allow beheading? ... and as I was already looking into the OG Max 3ds Dink model I thought a nice slashing attack with a sword would be nice, but this should be a move that Dink learns or acquires somehow other than picking up a sword. Found a nice move on Mixamo, just had to get a model uploaded without errors, which took a bit. There was some weird pants/crotch stuff going on, that I never resolved that was part of the way the original model seemed to have been created.
So then I thought, okay, I'll just edit the OG NPC graphics, remove heads and add the spurting blood, but this proved tricky with the females and their hair. My first attempt was the little girl and I tried patching over with a clone brush in both Krita and Gimp to a limited success. At some point in the development of the headless dying procedures that character was headless for a while, but I lost that when I adjusted things for more NPCs. (I think the graphics are still there, just not used) Something to do with when the engine runs the hit() and die() procedures. In the end I went back to the 3ds models for the female NPCs, bounced out both fbx and obj versions from Max2025 so I could do versions without heads in blender. I found using obj a somewhat easier format as it seemed to preserve the materials better, although never quite matching the final rendered version of the OG bmp files, and in the end I made new graphics for the blue maiden as these were used for both Libby and Christina, and I wanted Libby to be crying, and Christina to dance... because at some point I thought, why just have slaughter when you can have dancing as well! (I find it amusing to see Dink dance, and had earlier updated SOB with a dance move which I did by manipulating the bmp files in Procreate).
It took a while to get all the NPC model's into blender, but not so long to animated, although the dresses were weird at first until I dampened down the leg weighting and added a "drag" bone to the rear end.
With the dancing, my initial thought was to make certain cut scenes into musical numbers, but this was a bit too ambitious, so I thought what if Dink learns or acquires a Pied Piper type ability? And he can use it on people and/or monsters. In the end he just uses it on the mini-Seths (brain 3) and the dragons in the end world (brain 10).
So while this was all progressing along in my usual meandering way, I first went back to having the One True Seth as the final boss and was going to leave it there, but then decided nah, let's use one of the unused sprite graphics I created for Legend's Tale all those years ago... but they are pretty big, so a re-size and convert to png had to happen, as well as tweaks to the movement/depth dot combination to make the creature appear to by flying over Dink.
And around this time I was also wanting to get around what I thought of as the unnecessary amount of gold grinding you had to do, so why not have Rumpelstiltskin appear, and if Dink finds straw this magical creature will turn it to gold. Plus I could make the spinning wheel spin... wheeeeeee... and open up all the areas on the map of the OG game that were not accessible, like the hills separating KerSin from Terris, and the islands east of Windemere.
Then as the deadline was approaching it was time to see what was working in YeOldeDink, as so far I had just been using DinkHD, which let me use 99 images per sprite slot, and go over the 999 sprite slot limit. And after finding out this didn't seem possible, Yeoldetoast worked his magic and made it possible, yay! I also found out that DinkHD still treats pure white as transparent as a png, when my spinning wheel graphics showed up with white backgrounds in YOD but not DinkHD.
In the end I didn't get everything done in time, nor tested properly by the deadline, so have tweaked things since then, and I may still reduce the whole straw into gold thing to only somewhere around 500 gold per spin, not 2000, as it is too much and just reflects my own laziness to gold grinding. But I did learn some more stuff about DinkC, about manipulating multiple sprites with spawned scripts, and I thought the use of a magic slot for a specific fighting move was successful, with the ability to repeat the move becoming easier the stronger Dink gets. Chopping of people's heads was both gorey and silly and seems a natural extension of the original game to me
I was surprised by the variations of the other entries. the Quest Log was a great idea, as was the teleportation one with the extra islands. The pig one made me laugh, but after a few conversations I didn't continue. Milder as best buddy was mildly amusing for me.
My vote, if you do this again, is for completing an unfinished DMOD. A small one...
For me, modifying the original game, or another DMOD, is more approachable than starting a completely new one. A map and scripts already exist, so that is a huge advantage.
When it was first posted, my initial idea was just to replace ducks with Seths and have Dink fight a big duck at the end, but after playing through the original game, there was other stuff I wanted to adjust. Stuff that annoyed me, like Dink being visible to NPCs when he shouldn't be. Then, after redoing the mini-seths and adding the headless blood spurting versions I thought, hey, what if Dink could behead any NPC, how would that work? Could I switch brains on attack? What sort of weapon would allow beheading? ... and as I was already looking into the OG Max 3ds Dink model I thought a nice slashing attack with a sword would be nice, but this should be a move that Dink learns or acquires somehow other than picking up a sword. Found a nice move on Mixamo, just had to get a model uploaded without errors, which took a bit. There was some weird pants/crotch stuff going on, that I never resolved that was part of the way the original model seemed to have been created.
So then I thought, okay, I'll just edit the OG NPC graphics, remove heads and add the spurting blood, but this proved tricky with the females and their hair. My first attempt was the little girl and I tried patching over with a clone brush in both Krita and Gimp to a limited success. At some point in the development of the headless dying procedures that character was headless for a while, but I lost that when I adjusted things for more NPCs. (I think the graphics are still there, just not used) Something to do with when the engine runs the hit() and die() procedures. In the end I went back to the 3ds models for the female NPCs, bounced out both fbx and obj versions from Max2025 so I could do versions without heads in blender. I found using obj a somewhat easier format as it seemed to preserve the materials better, although never quite matching the final rendered version of the OG bmp files, and in the end I made new graphics for the blue maiden as these were used for both Libby and Christina, and I wanted Libby to be crying, and Christina to dance... because at some point I thought, why just have slaughter when you can have dancing as well! (I find it amusing to see Dink dance, and had earlier updated SOB with a dance move which I did by manipulating the bmp files in Procreate).
It took a while to get all the NPC model's into blender, but not so long to animated, although the dresses were weird at first until I dampened down the leg weighting and added a "drag" bone to the rear end.
With the dancing, my initial thought was to make certain cut scenes into musical numbers, but this was a bit too ambitious, so I thought what if Dink learns or acquires a Pied Piper type ability? And he can use it on people and/or monsters. In the end he just uses it on the mini-Seths (brain 3) and the dragons in the end world (brain 10).
So while this was all progressing along in my usual meandering way, I first went back to having the One True Seth as the final boss and was going to leave it there, but then decided nah, let's use one of the unused sprite graphics I created for Legend's Tale all those years ago... but they are pretty big, so a re-size and convert to png had to happen, as well as tweaks to the movement/depth dot combination to make the creature appear to by flying over Dink.
And around this time I was also wanting to get around what I thought of as the unnecessary amount of gold grinding you had to do, so why not have Rumpelstiltskin appear, and if Dink finds straw this magical creature will turn it to gold. Plus I could make the spinning wheel spin... wheeeeeee... and open up all the areas on the map of the OG game that were not accessible, like the hills separating KerSin from Terris, and the islands east of Windemere.
Then as the deadline was approaching it was time to see what was working in YeOldeDink, as so far I had just been using DinkHD, which let me use 99 images per sprite slot, and go over the 999 sprite slot limit. And after finding out this didn't seem possible, Yeoldetoast worked his magic and made it possible, yay! I also found out that DinkHD still treats pure white as transparent as a png, when my spinning wheel graphics showed up with white backgrounds in YOD but not DinkHD.
In the end I didn't get everything done in time, nor tested properly by the deadline, so have tweaked things since then, and I may still reduce the whole straw into gold thing to only somewhere around 500 gold per spin, not 2000, as it is too much and just reflects my own laziness to gold grinding. But I did learn some more stuff about DinkC, about manipulating multiple sprites with spawned scripts, and I thought the use of a magic slot for a specific fighting move was successful, with the ability to repeat the move becoming easier the stronger Dink gets. Chopping of people's heads was both gorey and silly and seems a natural extension of the original game to me
I was surprised by the variations of the other entries. the Quest Log was a great idea, as was the teleportation one with the extra islands. The pig one made me laugh, but after a few conversations I didn't continue. Milder as best buddy was mildly amusing for me.
My vote, if you do this again, is for completing an unfinished DMOD. A small one...
