Key Items


The Toolbox
Used by Worcester to fix damaged things, such as minivamp.
The spare parts in the toolbox can get used up.




The Medical Kit
Used by Dr. Pippali to heal characters. The medical supplies
is used.


The Sick Bed
Let injured character rest overnight with a chance of getting
better. Leave the patients along overnight. Anyone could use
the beds if they could get on or be carried.


The Mission Log
Used by Captain Crouton to log the progress at the end of a day.
The day does not end until the Captain puts down the book.

Lol, this is awesome, keep it up!

I love the look of your particular art style as well as your minigames, but could you write some instructions on how to play them? Thanks.

Game Manual

(Some of the controls described below may not work in previous versions)

To play the game you must first click on the stage area. The starting stage is the control room of the Albatross. It is associated with the number key 0. Hitting 0 will return to this home stage. In the home stage, there are nine screens that show the other locations associated with number keys.

If your starting stage has characters, one of them will be automatically selected as the PC. You can change the PC by clicking on a character or by pressing the alphabet key associated with the character (e.g. R for Romaina, L for Le Mon, D for Dr. Pippali, etc). The alphabet keys allows you to change character even if that character is not on your current stage.

Interaction Rules:

1. A selected character that is not knocked out can be controlled by the player.
2. The health of a character is represented by hearts on the upper left corner.
3. The PC is moved using the arrow keys, with UP = Jump and Down = Stop.
4. A character can pickup movable objects if its current health is greater than the weight of the object.
5. Hit Left and Right simultaneously to pickup an object.
6. Hit Down to drop an object.
7. Minivamp can fly and has a slightly different set movement.
8. Characters may get hurt from hitting the ground too hard.
9. Drones can be switched on and off by stomping on their heads.
10. When activated, drones follow the commands of the command signs.
11. Running into drone hurts.
12. Running with the drone does not hurt.
13. A character drops the object it carries whenever it is hurt, regardless whether it could pickup the object again.
14. The medical kit can only be used by Dr. Pippali.
15. To use the medical kit, move the med kit and the Doctor to the patient and press UP.
16. The supplies in the medical kit decreases per use.
17. The toolbox can only be used by Worcester.
18. To repair a mechanical object, move the toolbox and Worcester to the object, and hold the Down key until the object's condition is improved.
19. The parts in the toolbox decreases per use.
20. The sickbed may improve the health of a character staying on it overnight.
21. Each bed may only heal one character.
22. The Day doesn't end until Captain Crouton drops the Mission Log book.
23. When Crouton drops the Mission Log book, the Day advances, the patients on sickbeds may get better, and the current game state is saved.

Quote: Original post by Wai
3. The PC is moved using the arrow keys, with UP = Jump and Down = Stop.

Can't you make the control scheme a bit easier to control? Like instead of pressing the Left or Right Arrow keys to tell your character to move in that direction without stopping, allow movement to occur only when you hold either of those keys down, therefore you won't have to tell your characters to stop all the time with the Down Arrow key. Unless if you designed it that way on purpose.

It is designed to use the duration of keydown setting the speed. So a player could set a character to walk or run at different speed using the same key. The other scheme made the character movement appear always in a hurry:

Try it: Stop on release

This could be made configurable in the game.

Quote: Original post by Wai
Try it: Stop on release

I actually liked this one better, because you could manage the run-jump-stop maneuvers better. And well, its also familiar to me (Mario-style). The previous version I didn't even know or noticed that you could have variable speeds. Maybe like Mario you could have some sort of momentum system in there with this version you gave out, in that the longer you run (also keydown setting the speed), the faster you run. But that's just my personal opinion.

I will think about it because in Mario you have heck of a lot more of space to run.

warm-up

I am now gearing toward a system where the character's speed corresponds to its activity level, such that a character moves faster after it has been moving, and slows down when it is idle.

To artificially pump up a character's activity level to get the max speed in the morning the player would need to make the character jump repeatedly as warm-up. But this shouldn't be necessary normally unless a character had a bad night.

In this system the character's speed becomes an interactive story-telling element to inform the player of the character's state. (The player cannot controll whether the character is in a hurry. The character would decide whether it is in a hurry.)

Looks very nice! My only gripe would be that the gravity (or jump speed, or whatever controls the speed of falling) is set far too high for it to be possible to control the characters with any accuracy.

Gravity slightly decreased and character movement speed slightly graduated.
Holding UP and let the character jump about 10 times would be enough to
bring the character to its maximum speed (if you want to check what the max
speed is). Otherwise the character would automatically increase speed gradually.

[Try]

C7.8 - Maternal Sky


Depiction:
A daughter says goodbye to mom and enters a shuttle bound for Earth.
The shuttle takes off from the station. It makes a turn and disappears
into a star. In the cabin, the child gets off from her seat and watches
celestial objects in the vast, open space. The shuttle travels through
the history of a not so distant past, to embark on a journey to return to
the sky of a shared ancestry.


Season/Weather
o Sunny, with cloud


Location
o Kepler station
o Shuttle
o Space
o Low Earth Orbit
o Into the Atmosphere
o Cloud
o Pacific Ocean
o Albatross

Character
o Olivia

[ Maternal Sky (mp3) ]