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Sindrel Song - Stage 6!!

5 years ago1,938 words

Gasp! I've actually finished all the main levels of Sindrel Song!

There's something else (which is probably more interesting to people...) that I want to write a post about this weekend, but I wanted to get this out of the way, so...

Oh, first, though, I want - as is apparently tradition with these posts at this point - to say a little bit about how I'm doing at the moment, and that little bit is this: I'm doing badly! By which I mean that I've been hit with severe depression that's confined me to bed for days. I've got little done, not just in terms of creating projects but in terms of pretty much existing; I've been in a state of fuzzy half-consciousness, constantly consumed by mental darkness, terrible thoughts, nothing good, and completely unable to feel anything but awful about things I should at least get some kind of enjoyment from. So that's been barrels of fun. It hasn't fully passed yet, but I've been trying to do something despite it, even if that something isn't much. It's been easiest to focus on this game because I know what I'm doing, so it feels comfortable, sort of (my chair doesn't though; sitting still hurts, and that's so annoying).

Interestingly, this final song that I made deals with depression, metaphorically. Sort of. Or I mean that wasn't my intention when I first devised the setting and story, but I suppose it fits quite nicely.

See, the whole point of Sindrel Song, as I've said before, is that sindrels normally only live for six days before dying in a winter that consumes their world, and their whole life cycle is based around that. However, one sindrel, Hearth, discovered a way to survive these winters, to defy death so as to cling onto life on his terms, and he's introduced others to this to save them from death too. As Glimmer, the point of the game is ultimately to decide whether you want to take him up on his offer to let you live beyond your six days too, despite having your mind full of dark thoughts all the time (an important aspect of the story I've not touched on in these gameplay videos yet).

So Hearth's song is essentially him talking about how he didn't want to die in the winter, because life isn't something he wanted to give up. It's worth living. He describes the winter as cold darkness that is destructive, but which passes. He compares it to a tunnel with light on either side, or weather with dark clouds that will ultimately part.

This 'mental illness as weather' metaphor is something I've been fond of for a few years now, after learning about it while reading a ton of self-help stuff, seeing therapists, etc. I think it comes up in mindfulness stuff a lot. It helps, because when you're in a depressive state, it can feel like you've done something to cause it, which leads to self-blame that only exacerbates it, or to feelings that 'this is just the way things are now', that you've fallen into a pit and won't ever get out, that it's permanent. Seeing it as weather, such that some days are just bad days, but, importantly, that they will pass and new days in the future might have better mental weather, helps to find peace with it, and, in my experience, to help the weather change more quickly. I mean, the depression is still awful, full of dark thoughts that strike like lightning bolts, but at least it doesn't need to feel like sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to return.

As I said, I didn't have this in mind when originally coming up with Hearth or his song, but while composing it, I did. I hope that maybe some people who play it might relate it to their own dark moods and understand that perspective. Maybe it'll even help. I don't know. I feel like it might have helped me a little bit, making it.

I don't have a video, but here's an image:



This is using the iPhone X resolution, which I've been testing with recently since I have one of those. The background isn't painted in that size though and is stretched, annoyingly, though you wouldn't really know unless you'd seen the original. It's more obvious on other levels, and it's something I'll need to address (probably by widening the images and filling in the new bits).

I've changed the UI since the last post (which I see was only 6 days ago, to my surprise; it feels like ages that I've been trapped in this inner storm). I originally had the note buttons on the right because I imagined being able to press them comfortably with the thumb, but it wasn't working out. For one thing, it wasn't even comfortable - my thumb felt tense and cramped - but there were also large jumps sometimes that just felt awkward, even impossible to do in time, plus it mapped poorly to the keyboard layout I've been using for testing. AND my eyes were locked to the right, so I wasn't paying attention to what in the code is called the 'flow bar'. This new layout fixes all of those problems quite well so far. The intention is for it to be played two-handed, with each thumb tapping three keys (or alternatively you could lay the phone on a surface and use six fingers, three on each hand), though I've yet to actually test it on mobile so I don't know how comfortable that'll be in practice. It's definitely easier to play with the keyboard now though, since the horizontal layout maps properly to the keys I'm actually pressing. It makes me realise that while I'm aiming to publish on mobiles, it'll work quite well on a computer too. The only issue is that the lyrics are still far away from the area where my eyes naturally focus, so I usually miss them. I'm considering having them below the keys, or overlaid on the 'flow bar', but I'll have to maybe experiment and see what feels best.

The switch to change between light and dark modes is in the middle because nowhere else really worked, which doesn't feel perfectly ideal, but it seems fine so far. The hearts are arranged in the shape of the six-petal'd aster, which I've used as a visual motif throughout the game, which I like. Rotating hearts like this seems to make them not instantly register as the heart symbol in my mind, which is interesting, though I don't consider it a problem since having them just be generic hearts seemed a bit boring anyway.



Finally, here's a turntable of Hearth's model, since I included all the others like this:



This actually turned out better than I expected it to! So I'm pleased with that. He was the first one to overcome the winter and become a 'wintrel', so he's meant to look old (but not like ANCIENT) and wise. He's named after and based on the hearth of a fireplace, a thing that contains warmth, so he has that as the main motif in his design (Hearth also has 'heart' in it, which is fitting if he's seen as the 'heart of the group' or a thing that provides continued life, though I didn't do much with that because Remedy's already heart-themed). He has an aster design on his belt which is coloured like a flame (and which I think looks a bit like a wrestling championship belt, which wasn't intentional but which gives a hint of him having conquered something, in this case winter/death). The lighter coloured bits of cloth at either side of it seem to contain it, like in a fireplace. I personally feel that the rectangular stone designs around his chest and at the base of his pants are suggestive of a stone fireplace too, in an abstract kind of way. And the blue gem in the middle provides an interesting colour accent to break up the monotony, and represents the winter he's overcome, as well as crystals in general, which are important to sindrels. He's not wearing more than this to fit with the whole tropical/tribal look common to the sindrels. His hair is like flames, or perhaps icicles depending on how you look at it, and it's white to suggest both winter and age. His beard is longer than the other males' for obvious reasons. He has wings like Hammer, but unlike Hammer, he doesn't flaunt them; they're more relaxed, like a cape, which I think looks regal.

So yes, as usual, I've thought about every detail of the design!

I thought about his instrument too. Originally it was going to be some kind of piano; I imagined him using a stone tablet with keys that mirrored the look and function of the phone the player would be using to sing alongside him. I felt it'd be meaningful for the final song. I don't even know why, but I ended up going in a completely different direction instead. Now, his instrument is a crystal (which are a significant thing to sindrels, seeing as they have them as part of their anatomy and they're crucial for breeding, though this crystal just a rock, not part of a sindrel!), which is contained in a sphere on a staff. There are six 'keys' (arranged in the shape of the aster) on the top, which have pins extending close to the crystal, but not quite touching it. When the keys are pressed, the pins strike the crystal, producing a tone (which realistically wouldn't be different for each one, but that's hardly the least realistic thing here!). Hearth plays the instrument by first spearing the staff deep into the sand to secure it in place, hands-free, then hovering his hands over the sphere, using one of his six fingers to press each of the keys; it'd look almost like someone using a crystal ball (something that'll be tricky to animate, but I'll get to that eventually).

The instrument being a staff adds to the regal/important look, and makes it portable. I tried to imagine with all of these sindrels how they'd carry their instruments around with them, practically, in their lives (or in Dolour's case, his is rooted to the ground because he's the sort who'd keep to himself anyway). I've also enjoyed coming up with some original concepts which aren't just fancified versions of existing instruments. The sindrels (or rather Melody) designed these without reference to any kind of history or culture, after all.



This means that Sindrel Song is largely finished now in terms of primary content, though there's still a whole lot left to do. I need to decide what to do about the backgrounds (whether to make them 3D or just improve the 2D paintings), I need to add animations, proper dialogue, a bunch of technical things like managing scores and bug fixing, etc... I should start testing soonish, but I can't say when, especially since things like this depression get in the way and steal days away.

I'm just glad that I've got much further with this than it just being some idea I talk about before moving onto another one! It gives me hope that I can actually finish things.

The other thing I want to write about makes me want to finish this one quite quickly, but I'll talk more about that in a couple of days.