First Episode Opening Cinematic

The opening cinematic is audio played over a sequence of four images. Here's a breakdown of the script with descriptions of the images and references for them, intended specifically for Kelly, who'll be doing working on them.

Image 1

Fade up from black to show New Chicago from a distance. Chicago is a different city than it was at the turn of the century. It was badly damaged during a bombing campaign thirteen years ago, but has since been rebuilt. Downtown, lots of skyscrapers, connected at high levels by wide bridges. The wealthy live in the sky and get around on these thoroughfares, via horse-drawn carriage or automobile. Below them, and outside the downtown area, the poor live closer to ground level and travel mostly by cable car throughout the city. Everywhere, radio towers sprout from the architecture.

News Announcer: ...accident was caused by a loose wheel on the Army truck. Police expect the highway to be open by tomorrow morning’s rush hour. In other news, the mayor announced today that new restrictions on the Citizenship Passport System will go into effect immediately. Only holders of Level 7 clearance and above will be allowed within the downtown district after 5:45 p.m. Lower clearance levels will be subject to interrogation and incarceration.

Here's the real-world Chicago from a distance. I'm imagining something like this for the wide angle on the city -- like, an aerial view from this distance, or maybe a little closer. But I'm not sure that's best. If some other perspective seems better, run with it. We're really just trying to introduce the city as a character.

I'm including some other city shots that I like that are from different perspectives, mostly for style / atmosphere reference.

Image 2

Now we get closer, actually into the city. Nestled between mid-sized office buildings a single-lot “radio plaza” -- a miniature city park built around a public speaker tree which blares the official, national radio station twenty-four hours a day. There’s supposed to be grass around the concrete, but it isn’t very well taken care of. This is the sort of park where drug deals will be going down in a few hours. Maybe there are some kids loitering around a park bench. We can see, in one of the adjacent buildings, a single lit window looking over the park. There’s a woman’s silhouette in the window.

News Announcer: Unconfirmed reports of a death at NNWC are currently being investigated. A security officer has been murdered by a member of the Underground and police are closing in on the suspect as we speak.

I guess what I'm talking about is a "vest-pocket park," repurposed in this world to broadcast propaganda and news throughout the city.

I was imagining it from something like this kind of angle, too, although I found a good style reference photo that takes it in a very dramatic direction.

More reference images, just from a stylistic standpoint.

Image 3

Inside the office. Mills is standing at the window, smoking a cigarette and listening to the broadcast. Rick is at his desk, with his feet up, listening to nothing in particular. There's a cat on his desk -- maybe he's paying attention to her.

News Announcer: Dateline, Los Angeles -- Lewis B. Mayer, the top man at MGM has just had more sour luck. Only recently Mr. Mayer recovered from injuries after falling from a horse. Today, his machine tangled with a truck. One badly damaged ankle. In Mexico City, Peggy Fields, the ex-Follies Girl, will file for a Mexican divorce from A.C. Blumenthal. The Actress has settled for $135,000 net.

This is Rick's office. He's a Private Eye, so this is primarily a place of business. He's doing well enough, but it's not a fancy office or anything. Maybe a little small, but he's comfortable in it. Pretty bare, though. He don't have a lot of fashion sense.

I'm imagining the first image laid out kinda like this, with the two characters just sort of relaxing.

These are references for the sort / size of office I'm talking about, although these are maybe put together a little bit nicer than Rick's.

The phone rings over black.

Rick: Yeah?

Brief pause.

Rick: Standard rate. Where? [...] OK.

Image 4

Same office, from a different angle this time. Mills is still standing by the window, but now she and Rick are looking at each other -- engaged in conversation.

Laid out more like this:

Rick: We’ve got a job.

Mills: Finally. What’s the scuttlebutt?

Rick: Something happened at NNWC.

Mills: NNWC? As in, the station?

Rick: Yeah.

Mills: So there was a murder.

Rick: Don’t know.

Mills: Don’t know? You just accepted it without asking what type of job it was?

Rick: They’re paying.

Mills: Maybe we can spend the money on decorating your office.

Rick: It’s fine.

Mills: It’s dark, acrid, and smells like cat.

Rick: We’re heading to the broadcast tower.

Mills: Maybe some mirrors to lighten the room.

Black.

Radio Annoucer: We’ll continue after this commercial message from Arduina Vacuum Tubes.

That's the opening. Here's a little more detail on the characters.

Mills:

Rick:

RickPuncher!

A prototype.

Play it.

Bill

Writer's Meeting Notes 9/26

Today we talked about the character chains for the first episode of content, and fleshed out the characters a bit more. We also briefly talked about what the expository introduction of the episode looks like, and what sorts of environmental narrative we might be able to fit in there.

Intern's Chain

Means: Trained by the Resistance in electronics and circuitry.

Motive: Hired by the Resistance; Adding coded static to the broadcast; Pushed past Mr. Body trying to escape.

Opportunity: He stayed after work; He broke out before morning.

Conclusion: It was an accident; He killed Mr. Body.

Other Guard's Chain

Means: Operated radio equipment during the war.

Motive: His wife was having an affair with Mr. Body.

Opportunity: He was on duty that night. (FALSE: He was soused at a bar all night; the Engineer clocked him in.)

Conclusion: He murdered Mr. Body.

Station Manager's Chain

Means: He was schooled and certified in electrical engineering. (FALSE: His degree is from a radio college; he knows nothing about electronics.)

Motive: He was trying to collect an insurance payout.

Opportunity: He has the keys to the building; he came to the station in the middle of the night.

Conclusion: He murdered Mr. Body.

Engineer's Chain

Means: She's professionally trained in electrical equipment.

Motive: She was trying to fix the faulty equipment; Mr. Body startled her while she was working.

Alternative Motive: She's crazy.

Opportunity: She's there all the time. (FALSE: She clocked out well before the incident occurred.)

Writer's Meeting Notes 9/19

I was taking notes last week, and I do not take notes nearly as well as Simon, but here's the whiteboard from our discussion about the plot of our first episode.

In short, a security guard at a private radio station fell to his death sometime in the middle of the night. The man's family is holding the station owner financially responsible, and the station owner is demanding that his insurance company pay out, as per his policy for death on the job. The problem is that the police officer in charge of the investigation has ruled the death a simple accident, and the insurance company isn't paying up. So you've been hired to prove that the man's death wasn't accidental.

Megagame Digital Concept

This is a digital version of the basic overarching gameplay, as tested in the Mama Bear and Bluebird prototypes. There's no content in it yet, but you can see most of the pieces there. The important one is the theory puzzle, where you can see there have been some changes. Theories are now categorized as part of the means, motive, opportunity, or conclusion of a chain, and therefore have a more logical flow. Here's a link to download the SWF directly.

Photos from Bluebird Playtest

Playtested the second iteration of the mega-game today in class with Mark and Sean. Notes and thoughts are coming; first, here is the playtest in pictures.

I read out the response of one of the characters to the investigators' probing.

Here is the setup of theory cards that I pulled from as the players discovered more information.

Sean and Mark discuss their strategy regarding the logic-puzzle portion of the game.

The investigation's Big Board, reflecting current theories and topics of interest.

Sean and Mark try to shed light on the complicated relationships between characters.

Here's a small part of the whiteboard space I used when putting together the prototype.

I thought this playtest was enormously helpful. It illuminated some of the serious problems with this system and helped define an appropriate scope for the content. It also raised a number of questions about how the cooperative action between players will work when the prototype is taken into the digital realm. (Thank you, Elizabeth, for taking pictures during the test.)

World and Characters

Notes from the first "Writers Room" meeting this afternoon.

THE CITY

• Chicago?
• New industrial center in the middle of an agrarian region
• Some new corn-based industrial material?
• Nation undergoes a civil war -- Capitalists vs Communists?
• City & surrounding region is on the losing (Communist?) side
• New political leadership / tight control imposed on the city
• Surrounding (rural) areas still have rebellious sympathies
• A city surrounded -- like West Berlin
• Industry is centralized & can be controlled, but new media (radio) is decentralized
• New establishment has political / military authority, not popular support
• Pre-war establishment becomes post-war crime world -- still part of the system
• "Underground" rebellious movement led by new, tech-savvy generation -- anti-system
• Radio is ephemeral (difficult to record) but pervasive
• Public spaces with state-sponsored radio broadcasts
• Grafitti "tagging" public radio feed
• Covered city? High-society up top, criminal element rules below?
• Good excuse for noir lighting!
• Gadgets: Dictation typewriter, radio earbuds, signal jammers
• Technology paranoia
• Weaponized radio -- Pain Ray
• Secret frequencies, codes
• Anonymization
• Ownership issues -- Remix Culture
• Who creates news? Who controls information? Who control access?

RICK WARD

• Grew up on pulp comics about soldiers
• Came from the upper echelon, but has internally fallen
• Served in the big civil war.
• Spy that went undercover and had to betray the other side, even though they treated him better.
• Professional contacts in the establishment; personal contacts in the underworld.
• Hero for something that he didn't believe in.
• Hardened and disillusioned.
• Out of war, became a PI -- still wants the idea of the pulp comics "heroism"
• Interesting relationship with violence.
• MO: aggressive
• Flaw: Inability to follow through on his ideals.
• Afraid of the potential of weaponized radio technology.

MILLS LAWSON

• Newspaper princess
• Younger -- the underground radio generation
• Given name: Mildred -- very Victorian background / upbringing
• Comes from wealth, class; emotionally distant parents
• Epitome of the generational gap
• Grew up listening to radio plays about detectives
• Personal rebellion (vs parents) parallels political rebellion
• Who owns newspapers? Who controls information?
• Radio is a way to express this independence
• Underground radio reporter -- the Wikileaks of radio
• MO: charming, "trustworthy," sets conversational traps
• Quietly outsmarts everyone
• Stealth (Jade from BG&E)
• Introduced to radicalism in college
• Started to become big BUT wasn't prepared for the consequences
• Lost her radio equipment; must stay anonymous
• Unwilling to start over completely, thus retains "Mills"
• Back in college, went by a different handle
• Play-on-audio? Analagous to play-on-text handles

TOGETHER THEY FIGHT CRIME

• Backstory: Rick was hired to find her -- dangerous radical element
• This time, he doesn't turn her over
• Compromise: burn down her radio equipment, she goes into hiding
• They team up -- he can't take action in her world
• He sees in her something he wanted to be
• Acting for peace / social change through non-violence
• She represents his idealized version of "heroism"
• He can teach her to be a detective

Territory Capture Minigame Update

Second iteration of the Territory Capture minigame. Made some changes based on initial playtesting feedback, and integrated the new level editor. Here's a link to download the SWF directly.

Notice that there is now a tutorial progression for new players to learn the game. I've also tried to emphasize the parallel between the gameplay and the conversation. Also, replaced the nonsensical '$' meter with something a little more intuitive.

Territory Capture Minigame Level Editor

After getting initial feedback on the Territory Capture minigame, it seemed to me that the game itself isn't necessarily too complicated, but there are a lot of ideas to absorb all at once, and the strategy has to be learned. So I decided it would have to be a stepped experience for new players, and built a level editor to make designing that process easier. Here's a link to download the SWF directly.

You can design levels and click Trace Out to produce code that represents it. In order to actually implement the level, you have to paste this code into the LevelManager class and recompile. (Flash is good at some things, but working with local file structures is not one of them.)

Testing testing 123

I am here.

Word Runner Questioning Minigame

Another conversation minigame designed during out meeting last Thursday -- this one was prototyped in about 45 minutes immediately after. This is an abstraction of a conversation from the point of view of a freelance reporter. Obviously, her mental models are based on words. This is a prototype of a particular mechanic we wanted to try -- in a full game, the player would be attempting to use the word blocks to surround and capture an enemy character, representing the way the protagonist is adept at twisting her subject's words to trap him. Here's a link to download the SWF directly (for full size).

To play:

• Click on the big click button.
• As words begin to appear, type a letter that appears in the word on the screen. This will cause a new word to start.
• Words fade away after a short while, so type quickly!

Territory-Capture Interrogation Minigame

We developed the rules for this game during our meeting last Thursday. It's an abstraction of conversation from the point of view of a veteran who is largely defined by his history in the army. As you capture conversation points, snippets of dialogue play -- when you capture all them, the whole conversation plays out, revealing information about the case. Here's a link to download the SWF directly.

How to Play:

• Read the instructions. It's really more of a reference guide. Then click to proceed.
• If a point is highlighted, click on an adjacent to draw a line between them. You can click on a point that you already control to highlight it and start drawing a line in a different direction. If a different point is already highlighted, just click on the gray background to deselect it. (For convenience, you can also just click the next point and it'll draw a line from your last point, even if it isn't highlighted.)
• Your goal is to capture all of the conversation points. Those are the green circles. When you capture one, it'll turn blue to show that you control it. Conversation points will never disappear, and once you've captured one, you can never lose control of it.
• Yellow locations are supply depots. The one in the middle of the screen on the left your starting point. You're going to be drawing a line out from this point by capturing other points. If this line ever breaks (because one of the other points disappears) then everything no longer connected tot he starting point will vanish.
• You want to capture supply depots because they give you more resources. Your resources are shown in the upper right-hand corner. You need to spend resources to do anything, and when your resources run out, the round ends and everything you control will decay. You start each round with resources equal to the number of supply depots you control.
• The number on a supply depot decays, meaning that it decreases at the end of every round. When a supply depot decays all the way down to zero it will explode, which destroys it and every adjacent point. If a line went through one of those points, you'll lose everything further down the line. Plan accordingly.
• The little gray circles are strategic positions. As you can see, there are a lot more of them, and you need to use them to reach any of the other locations. When you capture a strategic position, a number will appear above it. This number decays just like on a supply depot.
• However, you can reinforce strategic positions, giving you more time.
• If it does decay all the way down to zero, the strategic position is lost. Note that it doesn't explode like a supply depot -- only the one point disappears.
• There's an exception to that last bit: sometimes a strategic position is mined. That means that it will explode when it decays down to zero, and there's also no way for you to reinforce it. If a position is mined, then it'll turn from gray to red -- but that might not happen until a couple rounds after you capture it. As soon as you see a point turn red, you'll have to reevaluate your strategy.
• You win the game if all the conversation points are blue.
• You lose the game if you run out of time, your starting point decays to zero, or game state is such that there's no way to win.

"Mama Bear" Prototype Playthrough

Notes from the playtest of the "Mama Bear" prototype this afternoon.

For the next iteration:

• More theory cards. You should get a new one on most of your turns. Lots of false or useless theories might not be a bad thing.
• The theory chains (especially the winning one) should consist of theories that are absolutely necessary to understanding the situation. If they can seem like they follow logically, that's even better.
• Some of the character dialogue needs to change after new topics are revealed.
• Some of the character dialogue just needs to be edited and double checked for links to theories, errands and topics.
• Some of the story points need to be emphasized more (Rocky's flight, Jack's extortion).
• Maybe have errands come in gradually.
• Pictures of the interns.
• Things that happen at specific times (?).
• Multiple outcomes from conversation attempts (?).

Today's Fast Paper Proto Territory Game

• Strategic points, supply points, and conversation points. Regions of the board correspond to (sub)topics of conversation.
• You are drawing lines that connect adjacent points. This takes one resource and one turn.
• Lines have timers with a randomized starting value 3-8 that count down every turn.
• You can restore a line's timer to 5. This takes one resource and one turn.
• A couple strategic points are mined -- a bomb timer appears after 5 turns, and then it explodes after another 5 turns.
• An explosion destroys the epicenter as well as all other nodes inside a radius.
• Supply points provide one resource per turn until they run out; then they are destroyed.
• When a point is destroyed, all lines that connect to it are lost.
• When a line's timer runs out, it and all subsequent line segments are lost and all subsequent strategic points are destroyed.
• You are trying to form a line that connects to each of the conversation points you're interested in. When a point gets destroyed you have create another set of lines to circumvent the area. When you control all of the conversation points in a region, you get complete information about that topic from the character.

Hello World

This is the internal developer blog for the Free Press project.