Dustblast - gwj60 (partial)

BUGS:

• If you are looking for Rob, do not enter the house behind him before talking to him. That makes him disappear forever and you have to start the game over.
• If a cutscene or screen fading seems to be frozen or locked, hit ESC for the menu and select Resume (with space). It's a bug with multiple sources trying to control the pause state at the same time.

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The game was written to have 4 chapters. This build blocks the game after 2 chapters because I ran out of time.

This game was submitted as incomplete, as a showcase of what I was doing. I submitted to show my friends and jam colleagues "hey, look what I was doing, I think it was cool!". I'm not putting it side by side with the ones who completed.

I submitted to cope with the frustration of not completing, but I honestly don't think it should be counted in voting. If you're not comfortable voting on it, don't vote.

A LOT of content was made during this 9 days which you don't get to see in the build (they are described in this page in the last section).  I will try to finish the game after the jam, because Stephanie's storyline is a project I love and I don't want to take it away from jams. I wouldn't (for now) make a parallel game for her, but working on something that I started in a jam is fine. So please give feedback in comments assuming you are seeing a WIP, not a complete submission.

That said...

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Previously, on Stephanie's Chronicles...

if you have free time and want to play the the releases in order:

Warthunder Type H (opens in new tab) - Where all started. Follow Stephanie on a mission to recover some data while blasting robots around

Access H7 (opens in new tab) - Sequel to WTH, Stephanie decides to help herself into  some hacking and get new robot toys

Mechtobacillus (opens in new tab) - Takes place 10 years in the past, and explain a bit of how things got in there on the antagonist side. Follow Kyra as she steals a novel energy source from a security building

But on that time 10 years ago, where was Stephanie? In Dustblast, help Stephanie as she's stranded in the place she wanted to be the least.

If you don't want to play the previous ones, just this one (boooooo):

(Contains spoilers of previous games)

In Warthunder Type H, we are introduced to Stephanie, a half-android agent sent in a mission down to a planet, to retrieve some sensitive information - with the help of Dave, her support partner. In the end, we find out she is not one of the good guys, and is actually stealing the data.

After the mission is accomplished, she cuts comms with Dave as she finds the robots in the complex to be promising, and wants to steal one for herself. In the end, she succeeds, getting out riding the big beast of her dreams.

Then, in Mechtobacillus, we jump back 10 years in the past, and follow how an agent from another organisation - Kyra - is sent to steal a fuel technology. The introduction shows her making the plans to build the complex Stephanie would be invading 10 years later. When Kyra steals the fuel, she doesn't hand it to her company but runs away with it instead, to start her own endeavour. The game ends with a call between superiors discussing Kyra's betrayal, and planning a mission to retrieve that in the future, under infiltrated supervision of one of them: Dave (Yes! That Dave!). 

But while Kyra was securing the tech to build all that we see in the future, where  was Stephanie?

(Spoilers over)

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Dustblast takes place at that time - 10 years in the past (while Kyra was doing her shenanigans in Mechtobacillus) - and we are brought to a very young, 20-something Stephanie, a girl (who was still fully a human!) full of dreams and hopes being shattered as she finds herself stranded, literally dumped in an almost deserted planet. 

In a landscape devoid of plants and where only bugs make company to the humanoids, a wasteland of sand, dust, and metal scraps from old broken ships... there is not even a single strand of hope for Stephanie to ever get out. Or will she prove that wrong?

This is the story of how Stephanie became the person of the first game, after all...

In a 3d retro style (as is tradition in Mad Parrot Studio games :P ), but this time drawing inspiration from classic MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Skyrim for the narrative and quest system. 

All models are hand painted by me in blender with the exception of the human skin which I modified. The only free asset used was a human mannequin base model which I used as reference for all the humanoid models, everything else done entirely from scratch. 

All animations are done completely from scratch by hand moving bones with the mouse. (No mixamo or generators).

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Things which ARE done but you don't get to see in the game:

• The cutscene system plays animations for the characters like gestures and body movements while they talk, if I assign them. The reason you don't see them and all characters are standing stiff during cutscenes is because I have to manually assign the animations to each dialog message and I didn't have time for that, so I just dumped the text with no animations. But the feature is there.

• Both the mobs and the random NPCs have 2 modes of movement: roaming around in place, or patrolling following a predefined path made by placing a sequence of Position3D checkpoints, which they move and pause around for a while on each one. I was planning to use the patrol thing for the random NPCs to be moving in the village browsing between the seller stalls and places to sit near a central square, but in the rush I forgot to even use it. Now all NPCs and mobs simply use roam. 

• The  empty areas are not "unnecessarily big" nor was the player speed miscalculated as too slow. What happens is that space was planned to have non-interactable scenario (like rocks and junk) for the player to look at and explore, so it was meant to be a somewhat interesting long-ish journey to go through, instead of "let's just run for that light post.... uh.... it's taking forever..."

• Characters have gear (which is related to the story):

• An entire new race (the planet was planned to have 5 races, but later I reduced the scope to 3, but this one ended up not included not because I didn't have time (as it's ready) but because with the finishing adrenaline I simply forgot to drop it there!)

• Stephanie can remove her jacket (which in the plot she uses to trade for stuff) - and the mechanics correspond and dialogs can react.

• Random NPCs can be interrupted in their way and interacted, and can give you quests (having the exclamation mark to identify them and track quest progress). The only reason they don't is because I didn't write the dialogs for that.

• Stephanie has a hurt animation which the only reason you don't see it is because I forgot to add the line calling it

• She also has an animation for when touching the exposed wires in her room (there are more VFXs in this animation which I'm not showing to avoid spoilers):

• Mergers can sit in the pub tables as well as on the stools at the counter. The only reason they are not is simply because I was rushing and didn't put ones in there.

• Their poses are actually animated:

• And finally (which is a bit of spoiler), this gives a hint on how the theme is connected. This is actually the core of the plot, not just a feature, and there are game mechanics, animations and the story ending based on this. The ending cutscene was not done yet, but the soundtrack for it was composed by me during the jam, as well as some of the animation.