I went to watch Joker. As a big fan of the Dark Knight trilogy, I was pleasantly surprised how the backstory of Joker snugly weaves into the entire franchise, as if it has been thought out from the very beginning. As for all material I find interesting nowadays, I try to see if I can incorporate the points I find particularly appealing. A memorable story doesn’t just depict an appealing main character, but also an irresistible villain worth defeating.
In fact, for the past two weeks I’ve been working on character backstories and the settings of the world, and almost didn’t touch any code at all.
Art
Y has been working on town mocks again. Here’s a mock for how she wants the town to look like. We had a discussion whether it’s worth it to spend time developing the tilemap tool to be able to draw this, as opposed to just to draw every building separately in Illustrator. Well, I hope I’m able to make a powerful enough tilemap tool that justifies the time I’ve spent making it.
On the other hand, Y has ideas for the second comic short, based on the backstory I just wrote this week! I shall wait with bated breath. Check out our Facebook page and Instagram, where she will be posting it.
Narrative
I started watching two new shows in the last two weeks, and somehow that gave me inspirations to write character backstories of my own!
A Certain Scientific Railgun captivated me with its characterization and above average number of “hmm, this make sense” moments out of a wild esper anime setting. Usually in this type of stories it’s very easy for the author to make up something that doesn’t even make sense within the rules of the world, and yet I couldn’t find big plot holes.
I find the protagonist Mikoto Misaka – an overpowered high school girl – quite intriguing. Her powers are balanced with various mechanisms that I haven’t considered before, such by rules of society, her sister, her feelings for her friends, and etc. It really reverberated with me on an emotional level, and I wanted to create something similar.
To commemorate this, I shall make our female protagonist Abigail a thunder magic-user, and I will find a place in the plot where she will be cooler than Mikoto Misaka.
Magic
While I can’t really divulge the backstories I wrote for Abigail and her father (whose plight is worthy of a game of its own), I do want to write about how magic should work in the game.
I have some objections with how magic usually works. You know, the type where users just declare the magic they want to use, and they unleash magic. Pure and simple.
But where did the energy come from? It can’t be possibly from the human brain, or their diet won’t be 8,700 kilojoules, more like 8,700 megajoules!
Also, what do wands/staves do? In Harry Potter, wands are necessity for magic casting. For many other worlds, they look like prop. If magic users are able to cast magic without them, why carry them in the first place?
I had this idea of moving the notion of “mana”, energy used to cast magic, to the magic weapons instead of an intrinsic trait of humans (more broadly, creatures). Magic weapons act both as vessels to store magic energy, and as conduits for casters to channel the energy stored within.
This solves both problems above. Magic users can no longer pull out crazy amount of energy themselves, and their weapons serve important functions. On top of enabling them to cast spells (making them powerless without), the weapons store the energy required by the spells. This means it makes sense for casters to carry multiple magic weapons with them on adventures.
I was slightly disappointed, very soon after, when I found out that the concept has already been implemented by Noita, a 2D exploration game where you play as a spell-caster. Oh well, I still think it’s a great idea to make a world out of. Noita is an amazing game, though. It takes the idea of “pixel game” quite literally by physically simulating every pixel on the screen.
Potentially Hurtful Truth
The other anime I watched, only because there are too many memes about it, was Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Why did I not mention it earlier? Because I regret every minute I had spent watching this full-of-cringe show. It is the epitome of cliches and awkward fight scenes. No. Just…No.