its been a very very busy month for me !!ill try to keep this relatively structured, so to start id like to go over everything i worked on this month ..first things first, early this month
i almost completely revised the lore of the universe the game takes place in !!
this might sound like, kind of alarming, but im way happier with what i came up with and it makes the world of the game far more distinct and fun to think about, as well as rounds out so many character backstories and overall gives me so much more to work withi dont want to spoil anything, which makes it hard to share exactly what did change, but to be clear the skeleton of the story hasnt changed at all, ive just expanded greatly on everything surrounding it
i hope you all look forward to what i have in store regarding the story!! id like to share more but hopefully i can ease into that lengthy explanation once the prologue is more complete ....
assorted ui changes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay ! !!!!!!!!!!
i promise these things are finally in some state of finality.. the game finally looks how i always wanted to and im really really happy with it!!!! id been a bit of a perfectionist about all of this even way back in the games infancy, as my vision became clearer i kept reiterating until i was satisfied which, was not a quick process by any means
this process of constant iteration, while incredibly inefficient in terms of getting the game done quickly, is the only reason the game looks at all as good as it does now, while im nostalgic over old footage/screenshots of the game, you can tell i was far less experienced and still figuring out how i wanted everything to look.. if it werent for the time i took making everything look how it did in my head id have never been satisfied with the game at all..
i can now say with certainty that the visuals are competent enough to where i no longer need to keep iterating on them like i have been!! as i said, im really happy with how the game looks now and theres nothing i feel the need to change going forward
audio stuff
on top of miscellaneous visual changes, ive also redone the sound design for low health, while i have shown this off before, i didnt really talk about it much
this was something id wanted in the game for a LONG time, the battle music in the game (so far) isnt particularly intense or anything, so i wanted to better emphasize that whoever youre playing as is Dying and that is in fact Scary
really early on, i used a plugin to slow the music down and lower the pitch in real time.. this was cool, and did what i wanted it to, except it made these really grating noises every so often and heavily impacted performance because, as it turns out, constantly updating the audio settings was really bad for the engine and my ears
new album art + exclusive (early) look at tracklist/back + soundtrack plans
im really really happy with these like really happy with these i dont have a ton more to say about them but i hope you guys like them too ....
up until now i did have a hand in some of the soundtrack, you can find everything id made for the game here ...
while i dont think its all Terrible, im by no means a musician and im still learning.. and because of that i dont think any of my work will see the final version of the game besides the theme and anything derivative of that (hall of 100 choices, last stop)
as i said in regards to the visuals, i do have a standard of like, competence with the game and i dont think a lot of my music meets that standard at least for me, ill continue to learn and practice and maybe in the sequel ill be more comfortable including my work, but for now i hope nobody minds the change..... please look forward to new music from people besides me!! my friends are very talented and ill look for others in the future who im sure will also do a great job
mechanic work
one of the big things i got done this month, which i did already show off.. is the new downed system
effectively, the game still has very punishing permadeath, however to encourage risk taking, each character has 2 lives now in a sense.. just be careful because after that theyre gone Forever seriously
this is something id been wanting to add for a long time, and that gave me the hardest time ever trying to implement because the way the death state works in rpgmaker was seemingly extremely rigid and hard to work around.. although the way i did get it to work was extremely simple and made me feel really dumb once i figured it out..... thats just how these things go i suppose
DIALOGUE PORTRAITS DONE !!!!!!!!!!!!! kind of
16 sprites for all 12 characters,, thats 192 total!!!!!!!thats a big deal to me ..
this was my big goal this month, i really wanted to finish these so i can just finally move to the actual writing stage, id been putting it off all this time because i hated dedicating time to making placeholders but i still wanted these to look good.. it was hard to know when i was ready to finally make them but as soon as i finished that first darek sprite i knew i was ready to do the rest and im generally happy with how they turned out
of course, this wont be all the dialogue portraits in the game, in any situation that calls for an expression or something i didnt make ill put that together, and the antagonist still hasnt had any spritework done yet....mysterious........
going forward
so thats about it in terms of my work this month,..... i hope this provided some insight on where things are at right now
more importantly, im sure youre wondering what the plan is december onwards.. and that would be starting work on the prologue!!!!!!!!
ive already planned out the bulk of the prologues writing and structure, so next month im going to finally put it all together and hopefully have a full prologue and tutorial done......soon
i dont want to promise it next month because it might be more daunting than it seems on paper, but ill of course let you all know where its at by the end of december and i can probably give more of an eta by then
closing thoughts
thank you for reading and supporting me and the game!!!! i apologize for the lateness on this and the substandard presentation, i hadnt been sleeping well lately and ive been pushing myself to get the dialogue sprites done before today because i really wanted to have something more "complete" to show off regarding that..... i hope none of you mind, however since next months goal is a lot more loose i should be able to dedicate more time to the next one so look forward to that !!
again, i really appreciate all of you and i hope youre as excited as i am for the future of the game :0 3
(darek appreciates you too)