SSP Angel
Details
Initial release: March 23rd, 2023
Last update: November 3rd, 2024 / v1.1.1
Collaborators: Ayakamtka, Galla, Yuyudev
Features
- Information about ghosts and instructions on how to use SSP, including some obscure features that may be new to long time users!
- An option to toggle the tips off, in case you've heard them all and only want to see their other dialogues.
- About 200 non-SSP related idle dialogues, to entertain and delight you!
- Balloon customization settings for each character, when using either of their optional downloadable balloons.
Blurb
SSP Angel is here to teach you all about SSP! But fear not if you're already an experienced SSP user, SSP Angel is great for new and old users alike! They come with lots of tips and information, but you can also turn off their tips and be delighted by their 200 whimsical idle dialogues!
Potential spoilers beyond this point!
About
SSP Angel is a ghost that can teach you all about SSP and ghosts, but they are more than just that. New and veteran users alike may learn something new, as they have both basic knowledge and also can teach you about more advanced or obscure features.
And besides all that, they are made to be playable as a normal ghost, with the option to completely remove SSP tips from their dialogue pool! They will chat with each other, and have some silly, lighthearted banter. They're very straightforward, having no unlock conditions for any of their dialogue. Simply open them and enjoy their company!
They're somewhat meta as they have to describe SSP to you, but they also don't acknowledge that part all that much, especially if you turn off the tips. They'll mostly talk about their own world! To them, helping out the user is a job that they get paid to do.
Behind the scenes
SSP Angel is an idea that I kicked around vaguely in the background for some time, thinking that it would be a good idea to have a ghost that could answer a lot of basic ghost usage questions, show users some options that are less commonly known, and generally raise the sort of "literacy rate" when it comes to ghosts.
Eventually, steve02081504 proposed the idea of such a ghost, in the hopes of bringing on new users more easily if they had a default English ghost to use with SSP info, and I decided to take the project on. But as I did not have enough energy at the time to do the art for the shell, I enlisted the help of Vita.
We talked about some overall ideas for the characters, and Vita designed them and drew their master shell. I spent some time conceptualizing what the ghost would do, and I wrote all of the technical dialogues for the menus and the tip dialogues.
The non-tip dialogues were a challenge! I've always personally found that things which spout usage tips at me get to be grating after a while, and I didn't want the ghost to simply be tips, and then become obnoxious and unusable. So, I was really adamant that I wanted to have a lot of content which was not SSP related at all, and that this content would be accessible without having to also see the tips alongside it. This way, they can be used as a totally normal ghost, even after you've learned everything they have to teach you about SSP.
But, as these were new characters and not pre-existing ones, I had some trouble coming up with things for them to talk about. Ayakamtka joined the project at this point, and wrote some very good dialogues for them, which helped get my brain rolling, and we both contributed to the non-tip dialogues.
Vita and I both ended up drawing balloons for the ghost, at which point Galla got involved because they wanted to make color alts. This is why SSP Angel ended up with 3 balloons; 1 basic balloon that comes bundled with the ghost, and two alternative balloons that each have a lot of color options to choose from. These color options can be picked per-character, as well. The alternate balloons are distributed separately, so as not to bloat the size of the main download.
I enjoyed working on this ghost a lot, and I'm sure there will eventually be information that needs updated or added over time as SSP continues to update and fix bugs or add new features. For that reason, you should definitely try to keep the ghost up to date, and if it's been a while since the last version came out you may have to take some of their advice with a grain of salt. If they ever give information that is incorrect, or if you find their explanations confusing, please do tell me about it! It would be very helpful to me to get feedback when something is off, as these errors can be hard to spot on my own.
