Just Starting....
ntoll on 2019/09/25 23:58
of Stackzilla
— edited on 2019/09/30 02:21
Due to family commitments, my elderly neighbour getting ill and work related things I've only just started my game. I think this will be rather rushed. :-/
I've decided on a title: "The Alchemist's Tower". As I originally mentioned in my first diary, I'm going for creating a game with a mysterious and perhaps unsettling atmosphere (a la Myst) rather than cleverness in game execution (PyperCard is very simple). I'm going to spice things up with some prose and simple puzzles via a choose-your-own-adventure style mechanic.
To this end I've trawled the internet for photos of a specific and very atmospheric tower I know of in Switzerland, on the shore of lake Zurich. These have been normalised to the correct dimensions and turned into (mostly) black and white (I want to create the impression of great age).
I've also mixed some fragments of mysterious music and downloaded a bunch of free-to-use sound effects for particular locations. I might use some voice recordings of an elderly sounding Swiss gentleman that'll do as the wizard like "alchemist" character -- I just need to find the appropriately sounding "alchemical" phrases to weave into the story.
On that final note (of a story), I've yet to write the linking prose -- but this will come together as I finalise the puzzles and arrangement of cards, images, SFX and music.
This feels like it needs to be a "slow bake", but because of my time constraints this week it looks like I'll be rushing things.
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Comments
tizilogic on
2019/10/02 15:13:
ntoll on
2019/10/02 15:20:
It's Carl Gustav Jung's tower at Bollingen. :-)
When this PyWeek is over I'm going to do a write up of all the symbolism and subtle stuff I managed to sneak into the game (it's a sort of a metaphor for Jung's approach to therapy). I've just finished his autobiography (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) and I was reading the chapter on the Bollingen tower when the theme was announced.
Seemed like a good idea at the time since it struck me as all a bit mysterious (and creating a certain mysterious "feel" was what I wanted to achieve). :-)
tizilogic on
2019/10/02 15:24:
Damn... I was sure to have seen the photo of that man before several times, but while playing your game, I couldn't recall who he was.
So was it the circumstance that you read the book, to choose that location or are you also from around here?
PS: Can you link your blog/site, where you're going to post this write up?
ntoll on
2019/10/02 15:42:
I knew I wanted to create a Myst-like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst) point-and-click game but obviously didn't know the theme. It was only happenchance that I was reading the Jung bio and had just got to the section on his Bollingen tower. So, yeah, it was because I was reading the book which gave me the idea.
I'm from the UK, although I visited Zurich in the summer during my trip to EuroPython in Basel (my talk -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US0L6rjXVcQ) -- I think I ate the world's most expensive lettuce leaves in your national museum (18.50 CHF for a green salad!).:-D
bukmano88 on
2019/09/27 03:29:
For sound, I would google translator and audacity to make them sound mistickaly...