Game Characters Options

[MEands]

Name: Bark/Floyde
Age: Mid 20's-early 30's
Playable Character: No
Bio: "This stupid jerkface is annoying as heck, we only keep him around cause he knows how these programs work better than the rest of us." -One of the more irritable members of the Layer 3 team. Bark was raised in a wealthy home and was homeschooled by his father, resulting in a very wide range of knowledge, but a lack of social skills. He graduated college early and went on to become an engineer. He made simulators in his spare time that had become very popular in recent years. He was then hired by the Layer 3 company to create their extreme reality simulator.
Strengths: Understands how to build a realistic virtual world. He understands the small details that are able to make Layer 2 so believable. He is also a very fast sprinter, just in case you were wondering.
Weaknesses: Being slapped by other members of the crew. Spider allergies.
Appearance:  b.jpg ( 21.25K ) Number of downloads: 0


This post has been edited by MEands: Aug 2 2012, 10:36 PM

[bulmabriefs144]

Name: Sophie
Age: Mid 80's
Playable Character: No
Bio: Gives a whole new meaning to "senior" member, she's older than the rest of the members by at least 40 years, and the younger of them by as much as 60. She's fairly knowledgeable, but her true strength comes from the fact that she's Father's mother. Even if she messes up a program, which she has done on occasion when her mind wanders enough, he hasn't the nerve to fire her, as she had a real temper when he was younger. (I'm not sure when layer 3 is set, so I can't tell much about her past)
Strengths: Fairly decent programmer (she learned it when she was younger, so despite her senility she managed to retain it). Also the person to talk to if you want Father to do anything (he's still afraid of her).
Weaknesses: She's kinda senile, and mistakes various programmers for past lovers, children, etc. Sometimes it affects her programming.
Appearance: Something like this.

[Sparrowsmith]

We're getting a real host of characters for layer 3 now.
I'm not sure how I feel about Johnny's grandmother being on board, but I definitely like Sophie as a character.

Actually, a big plot point is that there is a 'glitch' in the game which causes the beach to be linked to the clocktower via a black pit (a coding error, moving between the pit will transport you miles in seconds) which is how the characters survive the initial destruction of their town.
Now, that's a pretty big blunder to make.
The kind of thing a senile old woman might accidentally do.

[bulmabriefs144]

Lol, yea that sounds like one.

(The reason I did it that way, is if Father tells one of the other characters "No you can't see Johnny right now," you can find out by talking around that she holds the cards in this whole deal and can tell them "Yes you can..." Before that, she just seemed like a kindly old woman. Probably just a one time thing though, since she might die of old age later on in the script)

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Aug 4 2012, 06:57 AM

[Sparrowsmith]

she could still be a higher position in the company without being a family relation.
She could be the mother of one of the other programmers, but she hired Johnny's father as the lead programmer simply because he was better, much to the dismay of her son.
She's a mother-like figure to the group, but this brings other peoples' families into it too. It's not like only main characters get mothers

[bulmabriefs144]

That's true (also it would still affect him because she hired him). But then we'd have to figure out family tree then.

Our programmers besides Sophie: (page 2) Sharla Dean, Thomas Hooker, Father (name never really mentioned, huh?), and (page 4) Bark.

Take your pick, who should she be related to? And who is the gf (Alethea is still a tentative name) in the other layers?

Maybe one or so more programmers, and a few guards to protect the secrets of this place from falling into the wrong hands, and then layer 3 characters should be done. Layer 2 will be a bit more difficult, and Layer 1 should have a few npcs and alot of just extras based on a template (like six or seven prisoners that just have one line).

[Sparrowsmith]

The exact relation should flow naturally, and I don't think any of the other programmers so far is old enough to have an 80 year old mother.

[bulmabriefs144]

Grandmother then? I'm not sure. We'll just go at it as we figure something out. Maybe she's not related to anyone, she's just the founder rather than the leader (which would be Father).

[MEands]

It might fit better if she wasn't related, perhaps just the founder, which could explain her personality, only someone like that would dream up a system this realistic and complex.

[bulmabriefs144]

Let's go with founder. Also, it explains some of the glaring flaws. If it were a grunt programmer making an error, other programmers would catch it, under orders from their supervisor. But the leader of the company? They'd assume they should just sweep it under the rug.

[MEands]

So they're all kinda afraid of her cause she could fire them if they acted up. This is starting to make more sense.

[Sparrowsmith]

Brilliant.
We have the guilt and desperation of a father.
And we have the unquestioned clumsiness of a founder.
An epistemologically challenging program.
The cautious hope of an old friend, and the consuming loss of a loved one.
And a lot of impending identity crises.

Shaping up nicely.
So, how bout that Rogue Program? I have this idea in my head that he becomes increasingly intelligent, or insane, as time goes on, but perhaps that is too cliche.
What could be equally interesting is if he is just an average person, average intelligence, etc. He's more like a babbling god than an evil mastermind. He never really accepts that he's just a program once he finds out.

[bulmabriefs144]

(I made this last night from an anime. Can we put it to use on layer 1 or 2?)



Yea, we should design the personality and physical appearance of the program. Do we have any leads? Is it still human for instance? Knowing glitches it could be anything. Which might be the point, maybe we might end up designing several forms to reflect a sort of warp in personality, where it doesn't know what it is anymore. At least one for him/her/it could be like some weird thing straight outta D&D.

[The Law G14]

Hey guys, not sure how far you all are with the character design and creation, but I know of a site that's great for helping in adding some nice dimensions to your characters, so if you all are interested, here's the link:

http://rpg.ashami.com/

By the way, most of these characters are really interesting that you guys came up with. Nice job!

[bulmabriefs144]

Yeah, I've seen this from roleplaying games. The problem with this is that you can get someone with contradictory traits, like extreme shyness and introversion, who has among their habits... talking too much.

[Sparrowsmith]

The rogue program is originally a person in layer 2 who becomes self aware.
Who that person is, or how it affects them, is still somewhat undecided. The current idea, I think, is that he is the junkyard owner.

[bulmabriefs144]

I forget, does he show up in Layer 1? What does he look like after becoming aware? (He's made from warped code, so probably not the same throughout) I'm assuming the whole shape-shift thing, but he's not really in control of it (more like, an identity crisis).

I think I'll make a junkyard owner form and a few alt-forms. This is a first draft, basically, so tell me which are good/bad.



First one is junkyard dealer (here's wearing welding armor), the others are various forms in Layer 1 or 2, and the very last is the corrupted code form if several of them are killed off. You might only see this form if you're in a sort of in-between area of the layers where the program really exists.

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Aug 11 2012, 12:21 PM

[MEands]

Hm, I'd actually prefer if the junkyard owner was a little more normal looking. Giving him the eyepatch kinda already makes him look dark. I'd prefer if hewas completely neutral, showing that he has no intent of destroying the world, he's just scared and confused.
I actually imagined e junkyard owner looking a lot like Ellis from Left4Dead. Really normal sorta young guy who just wound up in e wrong position. The programmers figured they'd try to kill him because nobody ever goes to e junkyard. (we need to figure out a way to keep kevin from telling him that they went to the junkyard)
I like the other sprites, especially the bottom left guy. Also,the top middle guy might even make a good eddie.
That's an interesting idea for the corrupted code, but you know it might look a little weird when the character walks in game, cause its gonna be a square.

[shinyjiggly]

I made a different version of the corrupted form.

You can still tell that he's supposed to be a man, but parts of him are in all the wrong places. Similar types of tile scrambles could be found in earlier games that were written in assembly (like Pokemon R/B/Y) when glitches occurred. Despite the presumed fact that the lower layers were probably written in a higher-level programming language than assembly (probably mentioned to be Ruby as a jab to any scripters playing the game), this sort of glitchy appearance will still get the point across that something is not right with him while still attempting to assert his identity as a human.

This sort of scramble is very easy to do, even in MS Paint (flip random selected rectangles horizontal a bunch of times), so this can be done to whichever sprite we eventually choose for his main form.

[Sparrowsmith]

I agree with MEands, the Junkyard owner should really be an ordinary guy.

He does make an appearance in layer 1, but he looks the same as layer 2 (because he glitches there).
Also, if his sprite ever does start acting up, he would probably attempt to hold himself together. He thinks he's real but trapped in a virtual world, if it starts looking like he is a program, he'll go even more insane.
This is also why he doesn't outright kill the characters in layer 2, he thinks they might also be real (because of Johnny). When the man first becomes the Rogue Program, he destroys the town (partly by accident) but that doesn't make him a murderer.

The Rogue Program is dangerous, but not evil, which is what makes it such a compelling end when he dies.
It would be ever sadder if he actually likes the characters. He only ever pretended to chase them out of the junkyard (private property, laws, etc etc) but he didn't mind them at all. I'm not sure how I feel about this though.

I'm also thinking we should only ever learn his last name, or no name at all, a fact Johnny will think about when the Rogue Program is dead.