Almost Final Puzzle Dependency Charts
May 18, 2015
Late last week, Gary, David, Jenn and I got together for what will probably be the last big brainstorm for Thimbleweed Park puzzles. Prior to our meeting, the main story puzzles had all been designed and placed into a glorious puzzle dependency chart, but what we didn't have were the puzzles for the character specific arcs.
These are the side stories that follow Delores, Franklin and Ransome, and, for the most part, these stories were conceived to be optional. If all you care about is finding the murder and uncovering the mystery behind Thimbleweed Park, you can ignore most of the side stories.
As I mentioned in one of the first posts, you won't have to complete these side stories by the end of the game, you can go back and do them later, and the way it worked out, you can (but aren't required to) do about 90% of the side stores before completing the game, but the last few puzzles require the main story to be completed.
This ended up working well from a storytelling perspective because the conclusion to the each of their side stores is tied to the end of the main story, so they should feel like nice epilogues to what has just happened and provide more insight and understanding.
The chart below is color coded to show the character stories. Ransom is in pink, Franklin is blue, and Delores is green. Most of these nodes are optional, but not all and it varies by character. Most of Franklin's puzzles are optional except for the first few. The first half of Ransome's puzzles are required, then the second half become optional. Delores is somewhere in between.
As I mentioned in last week's podcast, this is the most complex dependency chart I've ever done, and for the time being, I'm going to assume that is a good thing.
As a designer, I tend to over-design then cut stuff as it becomes superfluous. I find it easier to cut stuff than to hastily add stuff at the end.
Another goal of the last brainstorm was to find good (emphasis on the good part) puzzles for the rooms that have no use in the game. I feel were were half-successful in that. There are a handful of rooms that serve no purpose and we'll probably cut them.
The arcade has no use in the game, but we'd rather not cut that because being able to play some of the games that appeared in Maniac Mansion would be fun. It's going to drop to a C task and if we have time, we'll wire them up. Don't expect much, they will be more like WarioWare games than proper arcade games.
At this point in a project I like to group everything into A, B and C tasks. A tasks are necessary for the game, they can not be cut. B tasks are pretty necessary, but can be cut or at least redesigned to be much simpler. C tasks are fun stuff that would be fun to have in, but can be cut (and mostly likely will). I don't want to cut them too soon because they might end up being simple to implement and just get done. The ranking of A, B and C tasks are completely fluid, ever changing as the game progresses. Today's A task is tomorrow's B or C task.
I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the scope of the design. If we had another game programmer and another artist, I'd feel fine, but I'm not going to panic yet.
Now for what you've all been waiting for... the puzzle dependency chart. Feast upon it's glory.
The caveats from the last post still apply. Act 1 seems much larger than it really is due to many of the puzzles not needing to be solved until act 2, it's just the way OmniGraffle positions the node.
The modes with red outlines are node we still need to figure out the puzzle. We know the object/outcome, but not how you get here. These nodes will expand into 2 or 3 nodes.
Everything is blurred out, so there are no spoilers. Unless you didn't want to know the game had puzzles, in that case, it's been spoiled.
FEAST!
This one looks like very intriguing!
I see there are some boxes that crosses the Acts, good!
P.S.: one of the most amusing things I remember from Monkey Island 4, was the "abominium"... made with human parts, guessing how it could be useful in a way or another... I wonder if Thimbleweed Park will have some similar idea?
I just wouldn't like another Neverhood Hall of Records. That one was cool for the first playthrough, but really frustrating in any replays.
Me: "One specific question about designing TP...
1) So is every room intended to have an item to acquire and/or a puzzle to solve? Obviously no one wants to go into an almost entirely empty room with a lone weirdo npc standing inside who only says "I am error" when you talk to him, but I don't mind if a room exists just to have npcs to interact with who give out useful information about the town or hints about what to do next"
David Fox's response: "Re your question 1, I think it's ok for some rooms not to have puzzles to solve if they're adding to the story/ambiance of the game. Always an opportunity to explore, get more info about the world, even if it's not required as part of the storyline. It's more about balance and storytelling and having fun while you're doing it. My 2 cents."
Ron Gilbert's additional response: "Yeah, David's right. Every room has to have a purpose. That purpose can be a puzzle, meeting an important character, seeing a story element or just helping to define the world (in decreasing order of importance). It's better if a room's purpose is more than just one of those things and a perfect room does all 4. If you have to many rooms's that do only one of them, then the game starts to feel sparse. The goal is a tight game."
I'm also SO EXCITED about the POTENTIAL to play those arcade games. Man, that was THE DREAM when I was a kid. (That, and unlocking the ability 'go to bed' with Razor ;)
I paid to get frustrated with an old-school adventure game, seems like my prayers have been answered!
http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/act_123_puzzles
She’s still a mystery though.
Maybe in Thimbleweed Park the characters could travel between time and space, go 10 years in the future (1997), meet the Mindbenders and return to 1987 to warn the people!
The idea of time travel is an element that I use to associate heavily with the era from mid-80s till mid-90s, since the Back To The Future trilogy dates from that period and the plot of Day Of The Tentacle was seemingly influenced by these popular flicks (just as a lot of other products from that era).
Many things to check... many games to play... many movies to watch... and many automatic clothes and shoes to purchase!!
You always make the comment "don't worry many of the puzzles can be done in Act 2", and that it's an artifact of Omnigraffle of where it puts the Act 2 node.
I've never used Omnigraffle before, but I searched the web and found that in Omnigraffle 6 there is an option to give a hint to the automatic layout engine of where to place a selected node (page 80-81 in http://downloads2.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Manuals/omnigraffle-6-manual.pdf)
Use the Object Rank buttons to assign a hierarchical rank to the
selected objects. Default lets OmniGraffle decide the rank based
on connections, Minimum puts the objects at the top of the
hierarchy, Maximum puts the objects at the bottom of the
hierarchy, and Same makes sure that the objects end up on the
same level. These assignments don’t change the directions of
connection lines, so you can always select all of your objects and
choose Default to return them to normal.
Looks like a nice program. I hope this helps.
For the development of Thimbleweed Park, or for any game in general really, when the developer purchases a license for a development tool/program needed to make the game, whether it be a sound effect program or graphic engine or whatever, when the developer or company purchases that license, can they use it indefinitely for future sequels/titles, is there a number of years before the license expires, or are they only allowed to use the license for the specific game that they are buying it for and have to re-purchase the license again if needing it for a different game?
Yours truly
Peter
Also, Thimbleweed Park will feature parallax scrolling, vertical scrolling, zoomed in/zoomed out camera views, better animations, and there's already a bunch of videos on this dev diary of the game in action, but just know that the graphics on the test videos are of very barebones wireframe art, aka very early, rough looking, detail-less rooms that were quickly put together so the developers have places to "walk" the characters around in to test out the game engine and stuff.