In previous GearHead games, dialogue trees had to be constructed manually. Each NPC could have an assigned dialogue tree, and random plots could override this with their own dialogue tree. This worked well but was labor intensive and somewhat inflexible. GearHead Caramel does things a bit differently. When a conversation starts, a list of all …
Category: Development
May 14
The Mechanical Tarot
The last big part of GearHead Caramel that I need to work out before making a release is the mechanical tarot system. It’s sort of but not exactly a random story generator, since the idea is for it to create an interactive situation rather than a sequence of events. Sort of like the difference between …
Nov 27
GearHead Caramel Progress
Work has been continuing on GearHead Caramel. The next scenario, DeadZone Drifter, is quickly approaching playability. There’s a random building generator and the random NPC generator has been significantly improved. The Mechanical Tarot scenario generator is working. Things are starting to look pretty good. In DeadZone Drifter the player character travels to various towns in …
Sep 17
GearHead Caramel Cosplay
Sep 11
Random Portrait Generator
I’ve been working on a paper doll type portrait construction system for GearHead Caramel. This is the first randomly generated portrait created by the system; the player will also be able to use the portrait generator to customize their character. Once I have randomized NPCs up and running I’ll be able to start work on …
Jun 17
GHC v0.130: Father’s Day Deployment
I’ve just uploaded a new release of GearHead Caramel. This release finishes off Winter Mocha, at least for now, so I can move on to creating the first real scenario. Six months after the Typhon Incident, you are invited to a charity mecha tournament at the newly built Mauna Arena. It should only take ten …
Apr 25
Stealth and Searching Work
As the title says, stealth and searching now work, both for the player and NPCs. GearHead Caramel uses a Dungeon Monkey-style invocations system for all attacks and skill uses. One of the great things about this system is that skills contain their own usage instructions; instead of the NPC AI needing to know about every …
Mar 20
Working on Stealth
My current project is to get stealth working in GearHead Caramel. For now, it will use the same rules as in Dungeon Monkey Eternal- if your stealth action is successful, your character will be effectively invisible until revealed. Unfortunately there are still a whole lot of details to work out- for instance, if your entire …
Feb 26
Winter Mocha Random Story Generator: Propp’s Ratchet
The GearHead Caramel mission generator uses basically the same random story generation process as the GearHead2 core story, but since you can play through Winter Mocha in about ten minutes it makes a much better demonstration model. This story generator uses what I call Propp’s Ratchet. Vladimir Propp was a Russian folklorist who broke folk …
Feb 17
Future Plans for GearHead Caramel
Hopefully, by now at least a few of you have tried the latest version of GearHead Caramel: Winter Mocha. How do you find it- too easy? Too hard? My plan for Winter Mocha is to use it as the introductory scenario and tutorial level for GearHead Caramel. As the planned features get added to the …