About the Game
In my lifetime, I have found many types of friendships; some that last the test of time, others that morph as we get older, and some that were never meant to be. May Our Paths Cross is a game that encapsulates the feeling of growing up and yearning for a time that may never return. As I spent the summer working at the school I attended for both high and middle school, memories of all sorts returned to me, both of laughter and joy, and of sadness and anger. I dug through pictures of these years, and was able to watch my relationships develop, spurring me to capture these emotions in game form. Each of the main characters reflects a relationship of my own, and writing each one let me relive the past and fantasize about alternate futures. As I developed and wrote each part of the story, this game became not only a way for me to capitalize on a shared experience but to move forward creatively and emotionally.
Nothing captures the difficulty of navigating relationships better than making choices and reaping the consequences and benefits of your actions. This was the deciding factor in creating a game that relied solely on choice, as I wanted difficulty to come from emotional decisions rather than gameplay, allowing for a wider audience to experience the narrative I have developed. Understanding that every action, even those that seem insignificant, can have greater ramifications, allowing for a journey that touches the edge of fantasy, but grounds itself within the harshness of reality.
Progress Updates
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Progress Media:
Dialogue System Experimentation
Hello all reading this! This is a site I plan to update weekly as I continue work on my project May Our Paths Cross! I’m excited to showcase the work I’ve completed so far, as well as keep all updated on the weekly progress going forward! Over the last 5 months, I’ve slowly been developing the concept and mechanics for the game, and while I want to show as much as possible about the development cycle, certain documents will remain discrete until the full release of the project. As for now, linked above are demos of the gameplay so far, sprite work completed, and other images from development.
As for more specific details, the project is being made in Unreal 5.4.4, as I began working on the framework and a demo all the way in November of 2024! As I firmed up the story details and got things functioning, I started to add a few art assets as visualization materials. While the gameplay system is very basic, it takes after the Serenoa’s Conviction system from Triangle Strategy, a game that was also built using Unreal Engine and possesses the same graphical style. The overall story has also been roughly written out, with some story beats subject to change throughout the creative process, but to have a feel for the characters, links to the character sheets can be seen above!
The gameplay mechanics are nearly fleshed out, with bug fixes here and there to polish the game further, but the biggest next step going forward is implementation! Creating and texturing 3d assets, making 2d pixel sprites, and copying dialogue into the game will consist of the bulk of my work across the next few months, so stay tuned for more!
Signing off-
Ryan
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Progress Media:
Hello Paths Pack! (I’ll come up with a better name…)
This week’s progress was spent creating and implementing the first area’s environment, specifically as a test run to see how long future implementation would take. The bulk of the week was taken up by modeling and texturing the environment and furnishings for the prologue area, with time spent towards the back half of the week on implementing the environment’s collision and ensuring the player character properly interacts with the environment. The biggest challenge faced this week was implementing collision, as due to the environment being a large singular model, generating convex collision in Unreal Engine was out of the question, yielding results that wouldn’t allow for player participation in the environment. Going forward, I plan to make more separate assets to prevent this issue from occurring again. I also plan to update lighting, as getting something visible was the goal for this week, but future weeks will see proper lighting to create a truly complete scene.
What tasks await this week? Cutscenes! I’ve fleshed out the system to work in both the beginning and end of a level, but haven’t created meaningful dialogue and interactions yet. This week will prove a challenge to finish these parts, and have a vertical slice of the prologue complete. After that, it’s onwards to Act I, where the player will explore Vincent’s youth through a playground, and I will figure out how hard it is to create 3 different paths to explore…
Signing off until next time-
Ryan
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Progress Media:
Hello Pathwalkers!
This week’s work focused on completing the cutscenes in the prologue area, as well as making some adjustments to props and appearance. A piece of feedback I had received was regarding contrast, so I adjusted the coloration of the walls to provide better contrast between the characters and environment. As for the bulk of the work, the cutscenes, much of the process was creating events within the Unreal sequencer to prompt sound effects, dialogue, and animations. In terms of dialogue, a piece of feedback I had received from last week was to make sure every instance of text possessed a letter-by-letter appearance style (akin to Undertale), and on top of that, I also updated cutscene dialogue to produce different tones for speaking (akin to the Ace Attorney series). After getting that sorted out, I created the cutscenes, which took longer than I anticipated, being an extra 1 ½ hours of time, but found that I was content with the result.
We’ve reached our first milestone, and I’m excited to share Act 1’s location and story soon. While cutscenes proved to be more difficult than I had originally thought, I am optimistic now that I know the process and can prepare for the next few weeks’ work going forward. I’ve started on Act 1’s sprites, as well as a few other characters, so I’ll share that among other things in my next update!
Signing off until next time-
Ryan
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Progress Media:
Hello Pathfinders,
This week’s work lay in creating Act 1’s artwork, ranging from 3d models to all character movement sprites. The overall work this week took longer than I had anticipated, but nevertheless, I was able to create all that I planned on while also encountering some new ideas and challenges. The biggest challenge, which I am still building solutions to solve is solving how I want to present the edge of the world, as the environment I’ve created is self-contained, and there needs to be a reality beyond it. To remedy this, I’ve been looking into post-process effects on top of creating some background assets to supplement the overall appearance. I have currently implemented a rough idea of how I want it to look, but am very open to feedback. Heading into next week, I plan to take what I have so far to give the scene life, adding cutscenes and NPC characters with dialogue and interaction prompts to change the player’s values.
In the 24 hours since I wrote what you see above, I’ve experimented a bit more with some concepts, leading to some new post-process effects and appearances. I’ve achieved a unique effect that I will continue to develop over time, but now, I want to shift my focus over to developing some story beats for the next week.
Signing off until next time,
Ryan
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Progress Media:
Hello Pathfinders,
This week’s work was building out Act I’s cutscenes, as the bulk of the content is hidden behind that for the level. Across roughly 8 ½ hours, I created cutscenes for the introduction, and each individual route depending on the player’s responses in the overworld. The biggest challenge was choosing how to set each scene up differently from one another, as with multiple routes in the story, having the player be rewarded for trying different things is critical. Each route takes place in a different part of the area, with the autonomy route on the playground itself, the felicity route on a bench by the big tree, and the sincerity route by the school building. While the cutscenes I created are not finalized, I am happy with the overall progress I was able to make this week and feel confident with the first half of the game playable.
With the first Act complete, there is enough content for a demo I hope to release in the next few weeks! For now, you may view the cutscenes for Act I at the link at the top of the page! I plan on improving some minor details over the next week on the Prologue and Act I, while beginning the visualization and content process for Act II!
Until we next cross paths,
Ryan