Category «Festivals»

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the week from 26-08-24

Friedrich:
I did some more work on our internal scripting language, which is now mila.gd - hopefully it's the final name. It even has a cute mascot now: Mila, created by Tom 'voxel' Purnell. For Mops & Mobs itself I did some more story/quest writing, mostly end content for chapter VII. And Jana and I replayed the demo once again and wrote down a lot of small and big things that annoyed us. Which means I did several improvements like small fixes for the dialogs, small changes to the UI, small additions to the first quests. Best of all, it's now possible to rotate objects via mouse in the inspection mode! And dirtheaps get automatically focused when you clean them up! It would also be great to have a character sheet in the diary, but this will have to wait a bit.
Oh yeah, and there was the gamescom. We showcased Mops & Mobs for a few hours at the SAXONY! booth in the hall for trade visitors, and had several meetings - it was a positive experience overall. I didn't get sick either!

Jana:
Did another week already end? I feel like I’m still at gamescom, mentally.
That’s where we were last week, exhibiting at the really welcoming Saxony booth (with an “!” because you can’t spell Saxony without sax!). It was only the third time the federal state had a booth there, and we made some promising business contacts regarding the release of Mops & Mobs, as well as met some really nice people along the way.
And this week? Well, I couldn’t concentrate much on development. There’s an election in our own federal state, Saxony-Anhalt, this Sunday, and there’s a real possibility that the far-right party could win and even appoint the next prime minister. So for the past month I’ve been politically engaged — partly to do something useful in the face of all the madness.
There was also a bit of 3D modelling for me to do (a rare case of Blender-ing), some planning for the overhaul of our card battles, and a lot of pulling general story threads together.

Patrick:
Last time, I was working on the swamp grass — well, it's done now. The swamp inhabitants use it for farming. In my mind there are seeds in the tips of the grass that you could eat raw but they’re easier to digest if you let them ferment in some swamp water and then make dough out of them to bake. And then you have tasty swamp bread.
Another thing I made this week was mushrooms. Maybe not all of them are edible, and some you shouldn’t even touch (but you can, and they wiggle). They serve a purpose for the inhabitants too, but you can figure that out for yourselves later in the game. :)
That’s it and now I have to eat something ... I’ve somehow gotten hungry.

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the week from 26-08-17

Friedrich:
Apart from more improvements to the game's scripting language (which was renamed from gompl to slang.gd) I primarily worked on the "skeleton" main story by writing and scripting the most important quests. Which means the fifth chapter can now be completed, but it's missing a lot of dialogues, player tasks and puzzles on the side. Of course all this will be added later on, but at least Johannes proviced new graphics for the swamp characters and I already implemented them. On to the chapter VI and VII! Oh, and last week I forgot to mention that I also a new trailer for the Trailer Tuesday Show; so a few days ago I extended it a bit for another showcase. Everyone wants "exclusive" stuff, hmmph. The upcoming week is gamescom week, so the next devlog will probably be a bit late again.

Jana:
Next week is gamescom, and I finished up some meetup schedules and pitches for the event. But I also managed to work on the temple level a bit more, where I replaced all the old textures to look similar to the dwarf fortress (Ha!) design Patrick already did - just some clicks with Friedrichs tool (yes to self-programmed tools!). The setting is not finished yet, the colour palette needs some retouches and the lighting is not right, but I’m happy of how the architecture turned out.
In said temple you meet a group of exravagant people whose dialogues I wrote. For that I found a page that assists me with rhymes (rhymezone.com) – expect crap – and also a huge fun for localization later. But right now I enjoy writing them – heavily infused with watching „Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead“ (recommendation if you like Shakeperean nonsense).

Patrick:
This week I worked on the cave where the big fortress is located and on the swamp grass, but that's not finished yet.

Don't forget, if you're interested in talking to us directly - about Mops & Mobs our something else - visit our Discord!

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the weeks from 26-07-20

Friedrich:
It's quite some time since our last "weekly" devlog, mostly because we were on vacation. Still, I continued writing characters for the main quest (chapter 5) a bit, but everything has a loose end for now. I also played through the last parts of the current plot line again, in order to do some recordings, and of course I noticed several script bugs and level imperfections that I tried to fix along the way. And the forge level finally has map descriptions!
Moreover, during some free time I got the itch to add support for arrays to the scripting language (gompl) that we use in Mops & Mobs. They are never really needed for our level and dialog scripts, but during some more complex scripts I sometimes thought it would make sense to execute several dialog nodes in a dialog graph at once. Arrays would make this a bit easier.

Jana:
We're in the home stretch for the story! We pushed through the final story points to get everything into place. There's still a wagonload of quests and lines to write, but we want to be able to play through the entire main story soon-ish. For now, it's mostly a rough skeleton to give us an idea of where we're heading by the end of the game.
Then there's everything else that keeps me from actually working on the game: I put together a super-rough trailer for a really cool showcase — if they use it, that is, because I was already quite a bit past the deadline. And gamescom is coming up next week, so I also prepared some more meetings and materials for that.

Patrick:
After over a week long vacation time I came back to the project and did some plumbing, which basically means I filled the open parts in the swamp level with walls and ceilings, finished the columns and ceilings of the swamp inhabitants' architecture and lighted the dark areas with flickering torches. I also started to put a new path into the level that connects the fortress and the huts so that we have now a way to enter the upper part of the swamp. The whole swamp level comes more and more together now. That's cool! The next phase would be polishing and shaping things here and there so that the quests in this level can shine.

Don't forget, if you're interested in talking to us directly - about Mops & Mobs our something else - visit our Discord!

AdventureX – Combine enthusiast community with fun

From gamescom to local meetups - today there’s no shortage of opportunities to display your game. You can get feedback, watch players react to your latest build, connect with fellow devs, and chase wishlists. But it’s often the smaller events, that have a huge impact as the community surrounding them can make all the difference. And if it applies to anything, it's the AdventureX.

The Tower Bridge in London.
London delivered the expected: Rain. And well-humoured Britains.

Last weekend, Jana was attending the AdventureX in London, a conference dedicated to narrative games - and especially those rooted in classic Point & Click gameplay.
Thanks to a jury, we were selected with Mops & Mobs to showcase our current demo there, as well.

Being part of the 30 exhibited games was a real treat. From organizers to volunteers, everyone was enthusiastic and dedicated to the genre and it's fans to create a well-run space for both devs and fans. Attendees were committed to often play thoroughly and discuss their experience in detail with the devs. Therefore, it makes total sense, the AdventureX requires developers to attend in person: catering to a special interest group made every discourse and examination of the games more focused and thoughtful than the typical questions you might get from the audience at a mainstream expo like gamescom.

A tale with a laptop and lots of stickers and buttons.
My humble desk had nothing but a laptop. A poster would have been smart, but honestly: the swag felt far more important at AdventureX!

AdventureX isn't just an exhibition! You will quickly experience that these are not just any volunteers or attendees, they are a tight community that has grown together over the years. Therefore, the overall event is a big hello! for everyone that's ever been at AdX before, devs that attended previous years and the Discord community that's been meeting online over the year. It’s rare to find something comparable in the wider games scene - perhaps A Maze Festival or developers being present at the Indie Arena Booth. But both grew significantly in size over the last years, while the AdventureX is quite small - they sold about 700 tickets over the weekend - and with that the event was sold out!

As I was solo at the event, staying in my little corner, I did mainly experience watching people play Mops & Mobs, having the most encouraging feedback we've had so far. Though that meant I missed most of the overall event - there were some developers or writers attending, that I would have deeply loved taking to - but hey, without the exhibition we wouldn't have attended our first AdvX either.

So I had an excellent time with my neighbours who are these wonderful people - and show the amazing diversity the overall exhibition offered:

Amy from AdvX, Eike and Ben from Trans Theft Horso - loved the humor, characters and songs - they're still stuck in my head.
Mosu from The Dark Queen of Mortholme - you play as the final boss - love just everything about the premise
Hammered Crow Games with Dark Tides - Victorian era, a weasel as sidekick, dark Rituals and a character that can fit anything into her inventory. Anything.

Now that I’ve experienced it, I’m absolutely in the loop, and I’d definitely return to London next year. With much more time to explore, I presume, as you can't submit the same game twice.
And the talks are even online. And the AdventureX Sale is still running until December, 2nd on Steam.

We packed some monsters for gamescom

Hear ye, hear ye!

Adventurers, Rogues, Dungeon Crawlers and Monster Whisperers - heed this proclamation:
The guild of RAT KING shall be present at the battlegrounds of the gamescom fields. From the depth of the pixel dungeons, they'll bring their monstrous friends that will get all emotional to see you!

Mark your scrolls and seek RAT KING amidst the bustling halls 4.1 at the Saxony Booth A-051g-B-060g!

Jana is armed with mops, monsters and a playable demo on the quest to seek brave allies along the journey as we are looking for a publishing partner to join our monster-filled drama.

RAT KING will have their permanent camp at the Saxony Booth on Friday, 22nd from 9:00 - 2:30 pm to present their freshly baked fully playable demo to all the mingling spectators.

Your eyes will feast upon:

  • the mysteries of our deck-driven dungeon scrubbing
  • our oddball crew of skeletons, gelatinous cubes, froglodytes and rude assistant rats
  • the true power of tidying up the lair

And for everyone of ye: there shall be a warm welcome to our “Bergfest” at the booth on Thursday - with beer and chocolate (Knusperflocken)!

➤