Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Hello, Derek Metaltron here, so this is a sort of central thread I have for announcing and updating and taking suggestions/help for my current project, Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War - The Telltale Series! Here's a bit of an explanation of what it's all about...

"You are Peter Parker, aka the Amazing Spider-Man! You decide on your actions and deal with the effects on your fellow Avengers, colleagues in the Daily Bugle, wife Mary Jane and beloved Aunt May as you get caught up in the Superhuman Civil War following a national tragedy! Who you side with in the Civil War, which allies you take and criminals you battle, which missions you undertake, how you protect MJ and Aunt May and how you use your incredible Spider based abilities as Spidey and Peter... all determine your fate and that of others.

Remember! The Superhuman Registration Act has the heroes of the Marvel Universe divided over whether heroes should be responsible and have their identities known to the government, and you might well be the lynchpin which could spell victory or defeat for either – or even both sides! Will you follow Tony Stark’s example and champion superhero reform and responsibility, or side with Steve Rogers' underground movement of fighting for secret identities and your loved ones’ safety? Will your stay loyal to your chosen cause or switch allegiances in a dark hour? Or will you opt to stay outside the conflict and forge a neutral path with both yourself and a select number of heroes as you fight to determine the causes behind the war, even if it means battling both sides? Your ultimate decisions may spell a brighter world for superhuman kind and better ending to the Civil War… or cause a terrible dark reign of super criminals running rampant!

Remember what your Uncle Ben told you… with great power comes great responsibility. But who among your friends on both sides can you consider to be the most responsible with their own powers?"

So the hope is this will be spread over six 'episodes' with the first I am hoping to upload before the end of the year, ideally on here, Inklewriter and on Text Adventures, depending on how plot mechanics go with each engine. It's based on the Civil War comic event, although it will have some notable differences. A couple of other things to mention..

• The Daily Bugle will be a part of the game, designed to bring Peter Parker in as much as a character than Spider-Man. J Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant and Ben Urich (along with Sally Floyd of the rival Frontline blog) will appear. This is inspired by Telltale's Batman with its dual use of Batman and Bruce Wayne.
• MJ and Aunt May are major characters and the most important supporting cast. Currently MJ is the player's wife which means no romance outside stuff with the lovely red head, but I m toying with including a secondary romance plot with a choice of 4 characters - Mary Jane Watson, Betty Brant, Black Cat/Felicia Hardy and Ms Marvel/Carol Danvers. I will have to think about that one so any suggestions at this stage would be awesome.
• Each side has a core spoke person of sorts - Captain America for Anti Reg, Iron Man for Pro Reg and Doctor Strange for Neutral. There's another aspect of each core path which is important but I'll leave that for now.

Let me know what you think or any suggestions you might have! I'll try and keep you up to date with overall progress, currently I'm finalising planning on Episode 1 and 2 (unless the romance material gets added).

Do you have any plans/ideas/dreams for adding a "sub-story" to the main storyline? Ya know, like a whole new plot with some other character as the hero or maybe a whole new superhero who joins in to get a piece of action?

I think it'd be really cool if you have a new storyline enabling the reader to create his/her own hero with their own set of powers. This is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but hopefully it will happen someday. 

P.s. Godspeed in your endeavours and may this story may be a 8/8!

There's no intention to have you play as a new hero in the game, sorry, although there is a possibility there might be a section where you play as a different character for part of a chapter. That's debatable though. I guess if this one proves to be a success though I might consider something like an X-Men game where you pick a character with a selection of powers. Something like that would be much harder to program of course.

But thanks for your kind words! Hopefully I can craft something to live up to the hype.

Well as they say "easier said than done."

I'm just throwing ideas around but 'tis you who'll be writing all the content. I guess it's up to you and your inspiration to give us something new to enjoy!

Exactly so. Currently I've got a fair idea on how Episode 1 - entitled 'Road To War' - is going to go in terms of structure, but even so there's three big core choices which affect a lot of what transpires in all future material, and how that plays out. Mind maps have helped a lot too!

Ideas are definitely really helpful, in fact I am still changing aspects of the story now whether it's adding a romance aspect - which I suspect I won't since I'm a big fan of Mary Jane and her with Peter anyway and this is a mature Peter - or the structure of villains and its possible impact on Episode 6 and the numerous endings I have in mind, since Civil War at its heart is a hero vs hero story and I'm changing aspects of that since I don't want the bad guys to be forgotten.

Thanks for your input anyway, it is absolutely useful to have when you're making something like this.

You do realize Telltale is a company, and not a genre or type of game, right?

It's more to show the types of choices you can expect to see akin to a Telltale game, mostly in terms of dialogue since I like the way they tackle conversation choices, so say it's like this...

"Give it up, Spider-Man, we know you're going to make the sensible choice here." Venom grins menacingly at you between those huge teeth, Betty still vainly to break his grip as the monster backs slowly to the window.

1. "You hurt her, you'll regret it."
2. "You don't have to do this.
3. "She's better than you are.
4 "..."

It's possible I might forego the tagline, but the overall formula of what makes a choice in a Telltale Game should remain, although without the need for visuals I can hopefully make choices matter more.

Yeah, you should forgo the tagline, because it's just stupid and confusing, because it doesn't fit. The style of telltale's games isn't extremely unique and has been done before, and it's just confusing if you have it there. Cool if you're going to do the style, though.

Well I wouldn't go as far as saying it's stupid, but you make a fair point since it is its own thing, even if I was greatly inspired by the telltale formula. I'll consider calling it just 'Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War' then. The style will be interesting to emulate anyway, though sadly I wish there were examples of scripts which Telltale makes for their game to know how they devise them.

But that's just called an interactive television series. Telltale didn't invent the genre, they just popularized it.

Also how do you grin menacingly? That feels like an unnecessary adverb, like 'punched quickly'. Everyone already knows what Venom looks like so of course his grin is going to be menacing, just like everyone knows a punch is by definition quick,

Just my two cents. 

I

It's pretty easy to grin menacingly.

I understand, but I was saying it's an unnecessary adverb because Venom isn't a human. Everyone knows what Venom looks like and he's always grinning menacingly. It'd be like writing a sentence like this:

The human stands on his two legs and has fingers, preparing to strike.

On top of that, he set a certain tone that makes the 'menacingly' adverb unnecessary. We know Venom is aggressive because he's threatening the life of someone. He's got Betty hanging from his claws. Thus, his grin is one of malice and isn't necessary to set the tone.

I'm not a prude on adverbs but sometimes a writer can make use of them in an unnecessary manner. Instead of 'grins menacingly', he could've improved the overall flow of the sentence and used a stronger verb or nouns.

Really it was a quick example of dialogue writing I wrote up than an actual scene from the game, though malice is a nicer word, so if Venom does appear...  ...I might include that.

(Also for the record in case you're not up to date with Marvel and Spidey or are are curious about it, the Venom I'm using here is the Mac Gargan incarnation rather than the more famous Eddie Brock one, the villain formerly known as the Scorpion. Rest assured he's just as unpleasant.)

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/104362/1939751-a_mac_gargan_venom_icon_for_edit_in_photobucket.jpg

Agent Venom is the coolest. Or was, until they did that whole Guardians arc that started really well but gave him a redesign and 'fixed' the symbiote into becoming a hero at the end.

I love the Flash Venom too, though I haven't been following much stuff in the comics since Secret Wars as it's gotten pretty samey to me. I get the impression that the new upcoming Venom series is going to see Eddie return to the role as an anti hero again. I have Mac here since he was Venom at the time of Civil War.

Like this.

Thanks, I was trying to figure out how to get an image in since img wasn't working...

Use this :P

Without rich text on, of course.

<img src="http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/104362/1939751-a_mac_gargan_venom_icon_for_edit_in_photobucket.jpg">

Hoping this works, and a nice example visually of what I meant earlier?

Yeah *applause* You got it :D

Wooh! :D Thanks for the assist. (Is there somewhere on here you can find that formula on here directly btw? Case it slips my mind.)

It might be on one of the threads that ask for help in advanced editor...not sure though. As an alternative, you could always upload pictures on "Pictures" in "My Stuff", keep rich text on, and do it like that. You can insert pictures from your "Pictures" into posts and your storygames. And, if the pictures are too big, you can use a free image resizer like Lunapic.com

Boop. Right here.

Ok thanks, that might make things easier for me, still adjusting...

No problem ^^;

And yeah, don't worry. It took me awhile to adjust too...I'm still adjusting actually xD

Venom has quite a few expressions, actually. He's a bit like the Joker, usually smiling in toys and promotional shit, but he's made plenty of other expressions in-content. I've actually seen him with blank/vacant expressions, he's done a "Frowning roar" several times when I've seen him in the comics, legitimate frowns, grimaces, closed-mouth vacancy, confusion, solemnly upset, and I know for a fact he's frowned in two of the animated series. Sometimes he smiles, but it's not even for a menacing reason, or it's not intended to be menacing, either. His face has about as much range as your own, you just don't see it often, because the villain that's supposed to be a murder-hatred-filled antithesis to Spidey isn't exactly a vast showcase of emotion 90% of the time.

I haven't really watched much Spiderman. And of the much I've watched I don't quite remember ^^;

Please forgive me ;-;

Not to worry! I never read Walking Dead or played Minecraft or Borderlands before trying the Telltale games and I follow them just fine, I won't be writing it assuming you have total indepth lore of Marvel. That's what the bios will be for, plus stuff comes up in dialogue ("I'm starting to miss the days when all I had to worry about was clones!")

You could do memories like in this story :3

That could work nicely, something like what I had in mind anyway with bios at the time. The only thing is whether I wanted them to update with how a character feels about you, since Telltale's Batman does that in the Codex in the Batcave.

You could make a character sheet/whatever you want to name it. Then do (Name of person)'s Approval(Or whatever you want to name this): %%(Put name of the variable you're using to keep track of approval)%%

For example,

Catwoman's Approval: %%APPROVALC%%

So by putting up certain variables I would be able to allow for when certain pieces of dialogue can be seen, like say...

Iron Man/Tony Stark

(General Stuff)

(If Pro Reg) I told Tony that I'll stand by him, whatever the cost. I just hope I made the right call.

(If Anti Reg) Tony's misguided this time, and Steve has the right idea. There's bound to be fallout from this.

Yep! :)

Setup, it'd look like this %%REG%=%0%I told Tony that I'll stand by him, whatever the cost. I just hope I made the right call.%%%%REG%=%1%Tony's misguided this time, and Steve has the right idea. There's bound to be fallout from this.%%

IF pro reg is 0 and anti reg is 1

That sounds fairly straightforward, for bios at least. I'm going to have conversations be a big part of the game so knowing what people think of you and whether you agree with them is important. And that will make later episodes work, though Episode 2 is likely to have totally different openings based on your choices.

You could do a same thing with conversations, using variables to keep track of stuff. c:

Variables are important xD

Yeah, and what villains are active, if you convinced someone to see your perspective, getting someone to turn a blind eye as you switch sides, which heroes might be dead or not...

...this is getting more complicated than I expected. XD

Hehe, well, all really good games are complicated :3

Stories can be more simple, but games are always complicated to make if you want it to be fun.

I would offer to co-author to help with scripting, but I'm doing the Halloween contest >.>

I think it's how many variations and options you want to include. At one point I had a major mechanic which involving multiple characters and where they were in sides and it was something I realised would be crazy complex to write. Though I still have something like it in Episode 1 so what do I know?

I'm not expecting anything until December at the earliest, but thanks for the offer. If I need some suggestions or help with scripting I'll let you know. :)

True xD

Well, my schedule might be cleared by December :) And suggestions, I'm not entirely sure if I can help with that as I'm not very knowledgeable about Spiderman :P

But scripting, yes, I can definitely help with that :3

Scripting is what I'll need the most help with, so that's totally cool.

:) I'll do my best!

It sounds like you just want Telltale to make a Spider-Man game.

Hush dear. He's making a Telltale style Spider-Man game. xD

Well to be fair they ARE making a Marvel game sometime next year, but I gather it's likely to be Daredevil or Moon Knight so I'm probably ok.

Most of the Spiderman shows I've seen aren't extremely memorable, because they just cover their own versions of the regular stories instead of getting into the trippy whole-universe stuff. I mean, I guess it's kinda necessary to get the origins down, and comic-book origin stories are half the hype, but most of the shows for most of the seasons are establishing shots.

Yeah this will be my 'own version' of the Marvel Universe and Civil War, so I won't be subcribed to the original event or the movies as they happened. All you need to know at this point is that it'll be a Peter Parker in his late twenties, whose been Spider-Man for about a little over a decade, and married to Mary Jane and living with her and Aunt May in Avengers Tower (along with a selection of 'New Avengers'.)

Ultimate Spider-Man tried to incorporate the entire universe thing but it's awful. Spectacular Spider-Man was better.

|-·;) And that face Steve posted...scares me...

Couple of other things I should mention whilst they're on my mind... there will be character bios for people who have no idea who the New Warriors, Firestar or Nighthawk are, and 'achievements' for getting certain stuff completed, though I don't know how easy such mechanics are to utilise here yet.

:o I like achievements. Maybe you could make a variable for the achievements! Or you could do %%VARIABLE%=%1%You got achievement ______%% for achievements!

Thanks! I think having achievements gives a reader a sense of accomplishment for getting certain conditions and encourages multiple plays. The idea will be that you get an alert when you get one and there's a menu for where you can see which to find. Of course on Inklewriter where I started this that's easier to add... I think.

Ooh, you could make scripting advanced, and add a global script to make text appear when you gain an achievement! And maybe make an item that is in your inventory to keep track of achievements! :D

That might take a while to learn, but I'll see what I can do. I saw the inventory in a game allow for bios, so that could be applied there! Do you guys and gals find it better to write first or program first? The hope is that I use October and November to write out Episode 1 for release in December.

I script as I work xD

That sounds like a good way to do things. I have stuff divided into scenes and chapters anyway for Episode 1, so I suspect I'll write out and script each one in turn.

It's the way I do it, you might want to ask for second opinions though. c:

Derek Will Remember That.

Hehe. I can also help with most scripting questions you may need help with c:

And I'm generally pretty active on here. I think I have at least 5 hours logged every day xD

Ok, well I know who to go to if I have problems then, thanks. :)

I'm not entirely sure whether that is something to just say proudly or something to hide in shame xD

Hey, just going to try and give a heads up where I am with things on the game when I can, as much for my benefit as anyone else's!

Right now I'm working on character bios, which you should be able to see at points in the game's first episode and hopefully in some central place like an inventory or something. And also what in the case of characters how they might feel about you, depending on key things you've said or asked them to do. There's kind of an example up above with Iron Man/Tony if you need it. Hoping that I can start up the first scene proper from October.

Quick update, so re-planning the structure of the whole game and that of Episode 1 is just about sorted and the most important thing I've elected to do is change how the Neutral side works. The fact is that of the three sides you're supposed to be able to join near the start, Neutrality is kind of a debatable one and hardest to map out, and more importantly was liable to have its own missions within early episodes, unlike Anti and Pro who are basically missions from opposite angles.

So I'm doing something different with it and removing it... initially. Basically what I mean is you won't be able to pick neutrality straight away, there's going to be an important moment about halfway through the whole game (which should be taking place early in Episode 4) where you get to question your earlier decisions and elect either to stick with your side, switch or choose to join a selection of neutral heroes... and in the case of the latter this allows for a whole different section of game where you operate behind the scenes more. It'll still require some planning on how the neural stance works for the latter part of the game but I think it will work better in the long run, and make Episode 1 and 2 easier to write and plan.

One bit of positive news which this opens up is that Episode 2 will now have two missions instead of just one for you to choose from for your chosen side., both of which see the Anti Reg and Pro Reg sides opposing each other and can be played from both angles, and feature different heroes to team up with or battle! More on this when I get to Episode 2, I think.

OH! I just realized what would be an AWESOME scene. In early ep 4, if you start to doubt the pro-registration side then you can write out that scene where Tony tries to override the Iron Spider suit! I love that scene. You could really imagine it in a Telltale game, complete with their dramatic music they play during every dramatic scene like that.

I love that idea and I did love that sequence in the original Civil War comic, so that can definitely be a consideration if you're on the Pro Reg path, and I think there should be some equal on the Anti Reg side with Captain America. I also want to ensure that both sides have issues and the promise to be good or bad, so I know that in the Chemical Plant sequence (which is a major part of Episode 3, regardless of side) I want there to be a number of ways it can go down, not just Thor killing Goliath, but maybe Punisher shooting a Pro Reg Hero instead?

So just trying to gage feedback for two questions for things I am likely to need some big planning for, though not strictly until Episode 2...

a. So one of the big moments of the Civil War comic is Spider-Man (who was Pro Reg at the time) unmasking at a televised conference, and I want that to be a major part of the game, having the fact people know who you really are. In theory the unmasking is something which will occur at the end of Episode 2 IF you are on the Pro Reg Side. I could make it an option to decline, and debate whether or not that forces you to change sides, or just affects your options/relationships on the Pro team (who know who you are anyway) whilst allowing you to remain unknown (and keeps your loved ones safe). Or maybe in this instance you don't have any choice if you're Pro. I'm just curious what sort of things you guys might want to see on the Pro Reg side in regards to identity. Whether you're known is going to have MAJOR impacts on all parts of Peter's life.

b. The other half of this is that I feel the unmasking makes a great ending to Episode 2, but I'm trying to think of a suitable equal on the anti reg side. I'm toying with the question as to whether Peter's identity can be leaked, depending on whether you have a bad relationship with Tony - remember just because you are Anti Reg doesn't mean he's likely to outright throw you to the wolves - or other factors, since there will be super villains in the story too which has their say in the war, especially in the latter stages. So any anti reg fans who can think of something suitable would be awesome.

Sorry the planning is taking longer than I thought but I want this thing to work well and I want a good battle plan for writing it all in my head.