Palmer Dae: Private Detective - Process Documentation

Description: 

A mystery driven point-and-click/visual novel where the player takes the role of a detective. The player must use their skills to deduce information and find clues to build a cork-board/conspiracy board of information, which they can then use to solve the case. In essence, the game is a glorified logic puzzle embedded within a story, along with some point-and-click adventure elements to find evidence. 

Process Journal

Week 2

I created an empty Unity project and set up the git, though I’m not 100% sure I did all of it correct. Other than that, not too much progress was made unfortunately. Most of this week was trying to think of a plan for the game, since we will be working on this for the next 10 weeks. A lot of my time was spent deciding between creating the game that I wanted to last quarter but didn’t get the chance to test, and expanding on a previous project, since those would likely be more iterable. 

I think I settled on the first option, but I will try to incorporate some puzzle/logic element to help make it testable in a way that isn’t just “write a better story.” This decision changed my design a lot, mostly because it just gave me an actual direction to go with my design, and feels a little bit more fleshed out than it did before, which is progress. Currently, my plan for a “puzzle” system is to have a “cork board” that the player builds over time. Aside from the point-and-click nature of the rest of the game, information has to be collected by the player, adding locations, items, and evidence to the corkboard, but the specifics must be deduced by the player on their own (i.e. using dropdown menus to select people they have met, times, locations, etc.). They can then connect these ideas using “thread,” and use those connections and deductions to solve the given case. I feel like this is more iterable than just a story, since the player can judge how information/clues are presented, and determine whether the UI/evidence-building system feels fluid, but I’m still not sure if this is the best route.

For next week I want to have a more concrete plan at the beginning, and hopefully create some sort of shell/outline for the game itself, whether that’s through testing in Unity or planning out some physical tree/document as something to build off of. I am hoping to at least get a physical outline, since despite my additions a large part of this project will be writing a plot/story, especially since I am way less confident in my coding ability than I am with the artistic side of game development. 

Week 3

I did not manage to get as much work done this week as I had hoped, mostly due to the fact that I had some issues with implementation. I had started, and mostly completed, implementing the "cork board" system, at least in terms of allowing the player to drag yarn between different points and make connections. However, I ran into a few speed bumps. 

The first major issue was that because my game will inherently be largely story based, I have to implement some dialogue system, a way to switch between the "dialogue" and "investigation" portions, and a way for the two portions to interact. This is something that I have never done before, and with my somewhat limited Unity/coding experience I am still working through this particular problem. 

The second issue that I found was that the system that I had thought of might not work for my intentions. Again, since I want story to be a pretty heavy part of my game, to an extent the game will have to be linear. I'm able to bend this a bit, for example by allowing any piece of evidence to be shown to anyone, but regardless the events of the story will have some order to them. As I was testing and planning, I found that the "cork board" idea was far too open to allow for this, without severely restricting the connections players could make, at which point most of the implementation for the cork board felt a bit moot. 

This, obviously, changed my design a lot. Although it feels a bit late to be doing this, and also makes me extremely nervous for the first playtest, I am changing my game a lot in terms of functionality. Rather than having a completely freeform cork board that the player can interact with, while also having that cork board be the means of contradiction/progression, I am splitting the two sections. The "cork board" will simply be a way for items noticed by the player to be connected, which then populates/alters the evidence available to use against other people. While this does take away thematically from the concept of creating your own conspiracy board, I think it will work better for the game itself. This was a major setback in terms of coding, however, as now I have to figure out both this new system as well as a dialogue system, both of which are basically starting from scratch at this point. In fact at this point I have barely even bothered to construct a scene/story since I have been a bit too occupied with coding, something that unfortunately continues to take way more time than I bargained for. 

Since next week is the playtest, I am hoping to have at the very least a working version. In the worst case scenario, the story/dialogue will not be implemented at all, and I will simply have the evidence/ideas laid out and maybe a basic written story/scenario for the player to read and not interact with, to at least test the "puzzle" system. Ideally I would have some basic story implemented, not for the sake of writing but simply to test the dialogue as well. 

Week 4

This week was most definitely the busiest that I have had so far, likely because this was the first week where I had a semi-solid plan in terms of where I wanted to go. Since in the previous week I had essentially settled on committing myself to a game that is a borderline visual novel, I thought that the most important piece to implement would be some sort of dialogue system to present lines to the player and, on occasion, give them choices to choose between. I did manage to implement this and, from what I can tell, it is working fully. There will likely be some speed bumps in the future, but I think I have a good starting point at the very least. 

I also implemented a pretty rudimentary system for the player to connect thoughts. As of now the game is essentially just a tutorial, but I do think it shows the basic concepts of the gam, which I can expand upon and complicate later on. 

My design for the final game has not changed I don't think, but in terms of this first playtest it has definitely been altered. Originally I wanted to have the basic scene/scenario, but since I decided to commit more time to implementing dialogue and having it work in conjunction with the information/items the player has, this first playtest will essentially be just the basic functionality, not the actual "puzzle" itself - in essence, it's like giving the player a Rubik's cube that's a single turn from being solved: there is not much of a puzzle, but how a puzzle would/could work is clear. 

As I have designed more of the game I have realized more difficulties, such as the fact that because the "puzzle" happens outside of the game, and relies on the player and their thought processes, testing "puzzle mechanics" is really hard without another person looking at the thing. Having so many different menus with wholly different functionalities is also a hurdle that I didn't anticipate at first, especially since, to an extent, they are all a bit intertwined. 

Next week, I hope to flesh out more of what I have right now. Each component (i.e. dialogue, inventory, connections) seem to be working now, but I have no clue how complex or convoluted it might get in the future with more hints/ideas added in. Therefore, by next week, I want to expand on these systems and how they work with one another. 

Week 5

I slowed down a little bit this week in terms of development, but I still think I managed to get a lot done. I wanted to secure the system itself to make building more scenarios in the future would be relatively simple, so I went back into my existing code for dialogue/connections/etc., and cleaned it up a bit, while also removing some minor bugs that I found that made it a bit difficult to play the game. Variable management in particular has been a pretty annoying issue, but I think I found a way to separate variables between the dialogue systems and other parts of the game that doesn't break everything. Realistically, I didn't manage to "add" anything new to the game itself, but I do know for sure that the next steps will be much easier with what I accomplished this week. I also started working on writing more for the next portions of the game, as well as rewriting some of the earlier lines due to some feedback during the first playtest. 

My design did not change that much this week, as the game did not necessarily change that much. I would say the part that was altered the most was simply the writing. Even though not that much existed for the very first playtest, I did manage to get a bit of feedback for that portion of the game, and it was enough for me to consider rewriting a few lines. 

In this next week I want to get another scenario into the game if possible. I would also like to completely polish/finish up the existing one, but to me right now it is more important to get a more complex puzzle in place to see if that will work for the next playtest, or really if it will work in general without the structure of the project turning into a mess as it tries to handle all the variables/combinations/checks. 

Week 6

This week was pretty productive, although I did not manage to get as much done as I had hoped due mostly to having to juggle a lot of other midterm projects. I managed to expand the game to a point where there are more "moving pieces," or more specifically more clues, evidence, etc. I revised, or rather had to revise, some of the dialogue as well, though that did not take too much time. A large bulk of the coding was spent trying to figure out how to smoothly change locations. I assumed this would be the easy part, as it essentially would just involve separating the components into separate "rooms," and then linking each "room" to a certain event/button. However, I did not consider how long it would take to organize and manage all the variables. Since I want different options and events to happen depending on how far along the player is and what pieces of information they have, the project has become a bit of a nightmare in terms of keeping everything connected logically but with no overlap or repeats. For example, I don't want the player seeing the opening dialogue if they return to their office after leaving, or being able to re-discover clues and information that they already got. I think I have a system that works for now, though I have no clue how it will work if I ever decide to implement a saving system. 

Once again, my design did not change too much. The main changes that occurred were story-based, since the more I think about it and add characters/dialogue/options to the game, the more critical I end up being with how things map out. I think this might end up being a pitfall, as I can definitely see future playtests either guiding the player far too much and removing any difficulty, or leaving them stranded at a leap of logic that was second nature to be because I wrote the entire thing but in reality is completely asinine. 

Since next week will see the next playtest, I want to get the game to a point where the player can solve some of the mystery. I don't think it's plausible for me to implement the entire thing in the next seven days, but I do think I can get to a point where pieces begin to come together a little bit, or at the very least have a lot for the player to mess around with. I also do still have to add art - I keep placing that on the backburner since the functionality of the game is really important, but art does seem pretty vital to a genre that quite literally has "visual" in the name. I will probably just settle for shoddy images in MS Paint, since getting the visual concept across is most important: as long as the player knows they are looking at a desk, or fridge, or trashcan, it does not matter (yet) how visually appealing it is. 

Week 7

I expanded the game a good amount, but in all honesty I did not manage to get as far as I wanted. A lot of rewriting happened this week, in terms of the story/sequence of events as well as the dialogue. I heavily underestimated how much dialogue there would need to be. Or more accurately I knew there would be a lot, but did not consider how long it might take. Moving rooms is still a little bit difficult to deal with in terms of variable management, and I'm hoping to clean that portion up before the next playtest actually happens. Furthermore, despite how much I have expanded, the "mystery" unfortunately did not expand that much. I think this is because the story is expanding "laterally" instead of "linearly," which is a comparison that makes sense in my head but might be lost in translation. Essentially, each beat of the story has a lot more to it, but there are still very few story beats. Roughly 1 and a half beats to be specific, which is not a lot. 

My design did change a bit, as I realized that in order to make the story less direct there needed to be opportunities for the players to make choices, even if they led to the same outcome. This did result in the "lateral" expansion of the game, which feels like a drawback, but I do think it will be better in the long run. 

I think my decisions for the next week will depend on the outcome of the playtest, which I am very nervous for. In all honestly up until the end of the previous week I thought this upcoming playtest would be with a friend not in the class, as opposed to an actual game dev. However, regardless of how the playtest goes, I do know that I want to "linearly" expand the game. Even though it's a little bit nebulous, I want to get the game to a point where the player can have a moment where things start to piece together, rather than just having assumptions or searching for more direction. 

Week 8

This week I worked a lot less on coding the project than previous weeks, partially due to wanting to take a slight break from the game and partly due to work picking up a lot in other classes. However, I did write a lot more - since a large bulk of the work will be creating a storyline that is consistent and has dialogue branches for each event, dialogue option, piece of evidence, etc., I thought that it would be a good use to time to write more since it would still allow me to take a break from coding. I'm hoping that since I mostly finished the groundwork for the project, "translating" the story into game logic shouldn't be nearly as difficult as it was before, though variable organization and tracking will probably still be a bit of a nightmare. I think my work flow from here until the end of the quarter will involve writing a segment an then implementing it, and repeating until I have the entire story/chapter in the game. 

Once again, my design did not change too much. I honestly expected the playtest to have more of a dramatic change on the game itself, but fortunately the feedback was mostly positive, and most changes would be for the sake of clarity or polish. As mentioned before, going forward, I think my workflow will change a bit, as I want to focus on dialogue and writing and making sure it's relatively solid before committing it to the game. I also assume that as I add more characters and pieces, writing will take even longer. 

In the next week, I want to finish writing the next leg of the game and then work on implementing it. I would also like to reorganize the UI as that was a suggestion from the playtest, but since that shouldn't take too long at all I'm not too worried about scheduling that particular change. There is also a new mechanic that I wanted to try adding, that only came up as I wrote more, but I do want to refrain from complicating the game too much. I might see if I can achieve a similar effect/sequence of events without implementing the other mechanic, and then go from there. 

Week 9

This week I decided to focus more on a bit of polish for the game. Last week I considered adding more story to the game, but considering how long it took too get to a good "stopping point" in the story, I decided it might be smarter to implement features and fixes that would add to or improve the game as it is. I rearranged some UI and fixed some bugs that I found while playing through the game on my own, and also added in some more dialogue in places that I thought could be explored by the player, such as investigating in the office while the other character was present. 

My design changed a bit after this week. Initially I wanted to make a complete story, but very quickly realized that it would take far too long, and instead decided to focus more on making the current state of the game better in terms of clarity. However, I do feel a bit awkward at this point, as I don't know if the changes I'm making are meaningful enough. Considering how close to the deadline we are, I want to make sure that I have a deliverable that is good enough, but I don't want to take on more than I can in the time remaining and end up with an unfinished storyline. 

Next week, I think I just want to focus more on polishing minor aspects of the game, like UI layout and possibly some visuals. I just recently did the final playtest, with the target demographic, and it went pretty well. There were some small adjustments that I could make, and some things that I noticed in the most recent playtest that did not crop up during the developer playtest. The game as it is now takes roughly 10 to 20 minutes to get through, and I think that's an alright point for a demo/prototype. 

Week 10

This week was a bit rough work wise. I attempted to merge the Notes and Evidence menus into one, but due to how I constructed the code they work separately, and trying to merge them only ended up breaking a few things. For now, I was unable to fix it, but maybe over the weekend I will be able to edit it more. I also worked on some minor bug fixes, and attempted to "tutorialize" the game a bit more for the opening section. Currently I still don't have a tutorial for presenting an item, but at this point the best method might be to just add some dialogue during the second leg of the game. 

I think my design is pretty set in stone at this point, aside from maybe editing the menu navigation to be a bit more concise. Other than than, I think expanding the game from this point onwards will mostly involve writing, then implementing the dialogue and branching options into code, which is definitely a tedious process but shouldn't be too difficult. 

For next quarter I would like to have more story implemented, but since the next quarter focuses more on polish that might not be a realistic goal. However, I do think at this point polish shouldn't take too much work ()hopefully). Therefore, my goals for the next quarter are to prioritize the polish and overall "juice" of the game, and then maybe add another "chapter" to the game, since as it stands it only has about 10 to 20 minutes of playtime, which isn't bad for a demo but, in my opinion, doesn't give enough time for the story to unfold as much as I wanted. 

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Playtests

Full Playtest Reports: https://adriankum.itch.io/capstone-playtests

Internal Developer Playtest (Week 4)

Setup

Playtest Goal: For this playtest, I just want to know if the simple systems I have in place right now for interacting with the world/characters are interesting to play with. I realize this goal is a bit obscure, but I don't want to build my puzzles/mystery around these ways of interacting with the game if players can't see how they could be used in more complex scenarios, or if players straight up don't like using them. 

Pre-playtest Instructions (intro to game, any prior information needed, details to ignore): This is essentially a demo to the core systems of the game and how they work. Only the mouse (left click) should be needed to play. The large majority of art included are placeholders. 

External Developer Playtest (Week 7)

Setup

Playtest Goal: I think that the goal for this playtest is to see if the story, as-is, is engaging to the player. I am a little scared to set this as the goal because it feels like the most difficult thing to measure, but I do think it is important at this stage. I do think the question from the previous playtest might also apply to this one, since there is now more to do in terms of menu/character interaction, but the first question is my priority for this playtest. 

Pre-playtest Instructions (intro to game, any prior information needed, details to ignore): This game is a mystery visual novel with point-and-click elements. The only controls needed are a mouse (left click). Both the visuals for the actual game and the UI are unfinished. The first portion of the game is "tutorialized" so some buttons may not work at first - this is intended. 

Target Audience Playtest (Week 8)

Setup

Playtest Goal: The goal for this playtest will honestly be pretty similar to my first one - do the menus feel intuitive, and is the UI or means of interaction too confusing to progress? Also, is the UI/Connection system interesting? Since there aren't too many moving parts to the game, I think clarity and a simple but interesting system is my priority. 

Pre-playtest Instructions (intro to game, any prior information needed, details to ignore): This game is a mystery visual novel with point-and-click elements. The only controls needed are a mouse (left click). Both the visuals for the actual game and the UI are unfinished. The first portion of the game is "tutorialized" so some buttons may not work at first - this is intended.