Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-09-13

It's the Friday Rambles.

Real Life Stuff

I'm preparing for my trip to Japan for Tokyo Game Show, which is in a little over a week. Crazy!! I bought new shoes (which are the exact same as my old shoes. I've worn some variant of Vans Old Skools for like, 14 years). I bought AirTags for my luggage. I got a big 20,000 mAh power bank. I wrote down my itinerary and train stop info that I might need in my memo pad.

I played a little bit more Baldur's Gate 3. I got to the end of Act 1 and didn't really have time to play much more after that. I want to play more.

I should be recharging my social battery or whatever for the show but I've been busy with social things too. Just gotta suck it up, I suppose.

Non Game Dev Stuff

As promised, I drew a Cirno Day picture and posted it on Cirno Day.

Above: Cirno is the smartest and the strongest

It looks a lot better (some might say, "different") than the sketch I showed last week. It was fun and didn't take that long to draw, so I should do it more often.

Merch and TGS Stuff

My remaining TGS stickers arrived!

Above: The sticker printers made the borders way thicker on the English version...

Anyway, I'll be giving them out at the show, and if I have any left over I'll be giving them out as freebies for shop orders. I made a few hundred, so I'm hoping that's enough...?

Speaking of TGS:

Above: Look ma, I've made it

I'm officially on the roster for TGS 2024! Look at that cool logo! It might seem simple and minimalist but It's actually quite meaningful to me - it's based on the signature I use on my arts!

It makes me feel professional! Am I truly a professional game dev? Exhibiting at Tokyo Game Show of all places? Strange! But, true??

My profile links to my website which is um, functional, but I wasn't going to make anything better any time soon, so I just cleaned it up a bit and added a small and fun thing to the design. Well, at least it looks presentable and has all the necessary info.

Above: "The fun thing in the design", in the corner there

Okay, I mean, it has a link to my game's Steam page and my socials and loads in 0.00002 seconds, what else do you need from a website, really?

I'll probably be adding a blog there at some point, though, for news about my game and stuff. Will be using a static site generator, of course, so it still loads in 0.00002 seconds.

Gamedev Stuff

I actually worked on the game this week. But not the TGS demo, which I'm considering done because I want to move on with my life and finish the actual game within the next century.

Well, I added one more thing to the demo:

Above: Penny's crying face will thank you as you leave the demo

I figured it adds a little bit more personality to leave a more lasting impression when the player leaves the game. It's slightly more cluttered, though. Well, trade offs.

As for non-demo stuff, I finished all the buttons on the new title screen.

Above: The new buttons

You may notice that the Bonus Gallery and Lumber Lass buttons have been rearranged, and there are new Settings and Exit buttons. There was no exit button in the demo build, because there's no point in exiting the demo build. What are you gonna do, play a different game at the Endless Monday booth?

Lumber Lass is an unlockable, so it's not there by default, so it was lowered to be below the Bonus Gallery. It will only appear once the player has cleared the requirements for the unlock. And there will be more unlocks in the Bonus Gallery, mostly in the form of being able to see new images and CGs unlocked by various endings.

The standalone Lumber Lass will retain its score between plays. It will also be updated if the player has a higher log count while playing Lumber Lass during the story. I covered that base!

To facilitate this new unlocking system, I made a new bonus unlock DB mechanism in the backend. I think it works well enough that I might repurpose it in a future refactor of the whole "EMVN Engine" for Game 2 for various other data tracking that barely works currently.

Now I just need to finish writing the story and drawing the art, the two easiest and least important things.

The End

I don't have much else, right now. Next week is my last full work week until TGS, so I'll probably be busy doing last minute prep for that, uploading the final build, preparing thumb drives in case the Internet doesn't work, making a Mac build for my Macbook in case the TGS build doesn't work for whatever reason and I need to set up my personal laptop, thinking of all these disaster scenarios and preparing contingency plans. Maybe I haven't been able to shake off the SRE mindset after all.

I'll also be extra annoying on social media posting about how cool my booth is and how everyone should come to it so I'm not all alone with a pile of merch nobody wants and a demo build nobody wants to play.

 Above: Me, possibly, at TGS

Well, if no one comes, at least I can spend all my time in the Indie Game Area and schmooze.

Okay, thanks for your support, as always. See you next week!