Flashing Back in Time

March 8, 2024

Yep. Missed the blog release date by a week. Again. Between the delayed February post, the shorter month, March starting on a Friday, and just a bunch of stuff, I lost track of all time and space and candy bars. While it may not be possible for me to go back in time to rectify the situation, that’s almost exactly what the Sleuthhounds are up to in this month’s blog post (despite my previously saying that I’d be covering the revised walkthrough system because, frankly, this month’s topic is more fun).

I’ve been working on the hint system for Sleuthhounds: Cruise for a few months now – a task far bigger than I initially anticipated. Part of that effort involves playing through every path and scenario in the game. I’ve already fixed a number of minor gaps and issues and everything was going well until I got to act four. Then I suddenly realized there was one fairly prominent plot point that I had made notes on but never resolved in the game itself. Oops!

I had initially hoped that the problem plot piece could be fixed by a couple of lines of dialog. A good dialog line can quickly and easily cover lesser story issues. However, in this particular case there was a lot of hypothesizing by the Sleuthhounds as to what and why the villain of the story had done something some time earlier in the story. Attempts to cover that in dialog quickly degenerated into a block of lengthy, boring exposition.

There was no choice then but to cover that piece of the story with a new interactive sequence. But, you say, you just mentioned that these events happened earlier in the game. That’s right, and that’s where the pseudo-time traveling aspect of this month’s blog comes into play.

[You know this takes place in the past because colour had yet to be invented.]
You know this takes place in the past because colour had yet to be invented.
Click to view larger.

To make this section playable, it occurred to me that a fun and visually distinct way to do so, would be to make it a flashback sequence. As you can see above, I’ve taken one of the passengers cabin’s and recoloured it in ye olde sepia tones. Characters that are part of the flashback are rendered in a sort of greyish-blue, while the characters reflecting on the flashback – Homes, Ampson, and Marion – are depicted in their normal colouring.

One aspect of this that I’ve particularly enjoyed is writing all the non-op dialog. This is dialog for any actions that a player does that don’t progress through the sequence (i.e. incorrect actions). For most of the game, given it’s size, I’ve had to use generic “those don’t work together” kind of lines. However, here the flashback section is small enough that I can incorporate custom non-ops. Since the Sleuthhounds are watching the events, they can then comment directly on all the unecessary actions, allowing them to make funnier and near fourth-wall breaking comments than elsewhere in the game.

There’s still work needed to finish this new flashback sequence. Once that’s done, it’s back to the game’s hint system. Next month I’ll be covering the much ballyhooed improvements to that very system – for reals this time.