Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-07-19

It's the Friday Rambles.

Life Stuff:

I've been going to bed about an hour earlier this week. The extra sleep has been really good for my energy and brain power during the day. I shoulda done that ages ago.

Ran out of coffee beans. Filled all my rings 10 days in a row (Apple watch fitness thing). Read some more Dungeon Meshi manga which I've been working through slowly.

Merch Stuff:

We've hit 100% funding for the Skye Plushie! Hooray! And I've been too focused on the bonus chapter of my game to do any sort of marketing or fun drawing or post about it, which kinda sucks. I should probably make a post sometime this weekend.

Gamedev stuff:

The new chapter is progressing nicely. I've been obsessed with finishing this thing as soon as possible, and I'm seeing the end getting closer bit by bit.

I drew a bunch of sprites and wrote a few thousand more words. It's all fun and good so far, but I'm also afraid it might not be quite as tight as the original. I'm going to have to do a good bit of editing and revisions I think. Or maybe it'll be fine after I stick an Island Adventure RPG segment in the middle of it. We'll see...

Unfortunately, even though I wrote a huge amount of words, I can't really show it off as cool flashy screenshots because they're mostly just the same places and people.

I took a break from writing by doing some coding. I decided to finally update the title screen main menu.

One issue I was having was that there were a lot of save files from the original game and I'm expecting players to have to make a lot more new ones, so I wanted them to start fresh. So I separated out the save files for the bonus story. This meant I needed a way to choose between the two sets of save files for when you want to load a game.

Above: Ahhh, fresh

I went through a few versions of this. Below is the current iteration. You can press "One Year Later" and it changes the screen to bonus mode"where "New Game" starts the new chapter, and "Continue" only shows you save files made within the new chapter. Pressing "back" sends you back to original mode. Oh, and I guess the official working name of the update is "One Year Later" now, but I'll give it some deeper thought after I actually finish the update.

  Above: The two modes - the bonus mode background is temporary - a relic of the ancient "Whiskey's Bar" bonus chapter attempt that ended up not happening (because it wasn't fun or interesting sorry)

Above: A previous iteration where there were two "continue" buttons on the same screen, with the background and button fading depending on which mode was active. I kinda liked the effect, but having two identical "continue" buttons was really confusing and ugly

I'm planning on adding a few more menu items like a gallery and a couple more goodies so it's good to have the extra space anyway. I'll do those while the script is being localized. After I'm finished with the script, whenever that is.

According to my outline I've got 1 more major scene and 2 sets of minor dialogue to finish off the first draft of "part 1", after which I need to focus on the main ending and side route. (Oh, there's a side route now...). I still have an unresolved thread or two that I want to address, and it might be hard to do with the currently planned ending, but we'll see. My writing process has been very improvisational, and something I'm writing will invariably lead to something else I hadn't planned on, but works well or is funny, and I'm gonna just trust my process. I'll just have to be ruthless during editing. lol

Anyway, while I'm close to being done, there's still a lot left to do. Makes me wonder if it's really worth it for a free update, but hey, maybe the game will enjoy a nice second wind. At least it'll be something I'm proud of for my back catalogue. And for when I release it on Switch.

The End!

Thanks for your love and support, as always! I will see you next week, when I'm planning to be able to say "everything except the side route is done." Here's hoping! Okay, bye!