#big ass devlog

[rna-world]

big fan of these fucked ass plants from the devlog

[shroomishthecuck]

Devlog #1

Rough Beginnings

Hey. Welcome to my first devlog. Stuff's been pretty slow, and unfortunately it'll only get slower because school :/. Thankfully, winter break is coming up so I'll hopefully get some more time to work on the game then.

Anyway, here's some gameplay footage. It's not much but it's something at least.

(the beginning is really laggy for some reason that's just the video tho the game runs fine)

Here's some screenshots of random stuff so anyone who's better at programming than me can tell me everything that's wrong with my code

Lastly, here's some unfinished spritesheets I have

Problems that I don't know how to fix

Whenever I change scenes in the editor or try to load the game an error pops up that says the name Animation_Component conflicts with something else. It's not a big deal and doesn't effect gameplay but it's really annoying.

Whenever you go from moving horizontally to moving diagonally Elliot twitches a little. It's weird lmao.

Any guidance on how to fix these (and how to make my code not suck ass) is appreciated :)

I guess I'll talk about the game's backstory now

It all started with a game jam. I'm pretty sure it was hosted by Firith Studios. It was an autumn themed one with a limited color pallet, and I thought of the idea of a Wario Land 3 esque platformer staring an elf trying to find the presents stolen by the evil king of Halloween. Each level would've had three hidden presents that would serve the exact same purpose as the treasures in Wario Land 3. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the project files for that old game anymore so I think it's lost media.

Anyway, I eventually picked up the concept again and decided it'd be better as an rpg. Thus began the age of me and my friend making random doodles and coming up with new characters in health class. This was basically the Renaissance.

And now, here I am, making this stupid ass game about a stupid ass elf for real. Crazy.

Other progress

I've also been working a lot on the game's soundtrack, and have been constantly thinking about the plot. Other than that, though, not much has really been done for this. Unfortunately, I'm very busy and also lazy :(

It'll get done eventually tho. I am NOT giving up on this shit

Plans for the future

I'm definitely gonna want to go through the Godot Docs more. I barely know anything about the engine and my code is probably horrible. I definitely want to start working on the battle system by the next devlog, and maybe even finish it. That'd be pretty cool. Other than that, a lot is still pretty uncertain. This is my first game and I'm kinda just winging it. Planning isn't my strong suit :/

See you next week :)

[galaxy-forest-productions]

Devlog 20/08/2024 - Travel game idea that will probably change with time but I felt like sharing cuz it's 10 p.m. and I'm not sleepy yet

Since I'm traveling now and dropping zines as I go I've been inspired to create eventually a traveling themed TTRPG. I'll take my experiences during this train trip in europe as inspiration and learning material for this future game.

The idea I have is for a large project I call fantasy tourist, a game about traveling in a fantasy world. The base mechanics are simple. You have a buget for each town, you can stay for as long as you have money. I also wanted to add the fantasy adventure element of being allowed to take small jobs to increase your budget and stay in a town you liked for longer.

The reason this would be a large project, is that I wanted to properly write town guides. I wanted this to be a little bit more guided than my usual solo rpgs. Yes, imagining yourself is part of the fun, but I want this to feel like a choose your own adventure book in a way. I want you to feel like these places exist already and you're exploring them.

In my ideal version of this game each town guide would have:

Budget – depending on your character and other factors the budget you have on each town may change. I'll also add a dice roll for a little bit of fun randomness.

Overall description – this is just a description of the town you’re in and what is known for.

Attraction guide – this is the list of things you can do and see in this town. Some attractions also come with guided tours, if that’s the case it means you’ll get a detailed explanation of the inside and little details of each work of art etc… Most will be a rough information guide, when it's open, how long does it take to explore this attraction and how much it costs.

Events - some towns will have seasonal events and I like the idea of the game following a calendar, so you'll know when you're in each place and even plan for certain's town's events that you really wanna see. You can even choose to travel for a whole year and plan all the events accordingly.

Theme parks – if a town happens to have a theme park that attraction will include multiple small attractions inside. The rides, the places and such will all be described. I might even include a park map just for the funsies.

Restaurant guide – this is a guide of places you can eat at in this town and the prices too. I will include tiny menus for each restaurant just because I think it would be cute and add to the worldbuilding. Like each page could be a menu of that restaurant.

Available missions and when – missions are a way to make more money. Each mission will sacrifice time. Sometimes a few hours, and sometimes a whole ass day. You will be provided with money for completion. Some missions also can only be completed during specific days and some can be repeated.

Hotel guide – a guide with the hotels you can stay in. Some of them include breakfast, some are hostels which means you’ll share with others. Honestly these are mostly for flavor, paying for a better hotel won’t affect your gameplay much, except for the included breakfast, meaning one less meal.

Townspeople – some relevant citizens may be mentioned in this section. This will be most prominent in small towns where everyone knows everyone. In big cities there will be less of these since there isn't that local people feel.

I also wanted to make some other little guides that would be used all the time:

Traveler guides – this is the booklet with all the other travelers you meet. You might once in a while meet other adventurers. If you meet them frequently enough you might become friends. If you are friends with another traveler you might even agree to share a room with them to save on money, or even go to attractions together. I also might make the hotels relevant by having some of these characters be easier to find in certain hotels. Maybe one is always trying to save and staying in hostels, maybe another is a rich girl that will always take a 5 star hotel so meeting her requires you stay in a top quality place and so on.

Friend guide – Sometimes you'll have friends in other towns. If your character has a friend in that town they can ask to stay there for free for a little while. Each friend has their own limit of how long they will let you crash there before they get angry. I think which friends you have in each town should be picked in character creation.

And that's the ideas I have so far. Making each of those town guides will be hell, but I feel like it would be a super fun worldbuilding project. I also think it would be a cool base to then have other versions with different flavor. I'm not even sure what kind of flavor I want for this one when it comes to the fantasy aspect. It may be the classic medieval fantasy, or should I go more urban fantasy, reflecting how we travel today with phones and all that but with fantasy creatures and magic existing? There are tons of options.

[sibyl-of-space]

what inspired the character designs in amadeus?

What a fun question! With the caveat that specific things can't be discussed without spoilers (and therefore won't be discussed), I'll try to talk about them to the best of my ability.

Amadeus:

I made the first sketches of his design so long ago I barely remember what the initial vibes were. I do remember that his long straight hair and rich boy vibes were kind of meant to be Lucius Malfoy-ish (Prisoner of Azkaban was a huge reason I initially became obsessed with werewolves, so that's where this inspiration came from. I don't want Amadeus to have anything to do with HP beyond this, for obvious reasons; but I should admit this influence).

As far as his actual clothing, Amadeus's weird shirt-coat thing is actually largely drawn from the cape I made for a DGS Sherlock Holmes cosplay. Hound of the Baskervilles is another huge inspiration for the game, and I find it way easier to draw clothes that I have made or worked with in some way, so I drew from that.

(this is the only photo I have easily on hand, lmao)

The pants for his full design are based off of pants I made for a Lloyd Irving cosplay, and the boots kind of are as well. So well, pretty much, cosplay gave me a ton of experience interpreting weird clothes into IRL fashion and making them, so now I get to do the opposite thing where I have a ton of weird clothes I've made that I can pull from when thinking about what characters might wear.

The most iconic part of his design, the arms, well... to put this in vague terms because of spoiler reasons: that was an example of the design actually being revised to fit plot details. It has resulted in a way cooler and more interesting design, but it wasn't originally there. I had to realize some plot things before I could reflect them in the design, and now the design would be unrecognizable without it.

Solea:

Solea went under drastic revision since my first version of her, because her character also underwent drastic revision and the OG design no longer felt like her. I wrote about this a little bit in a devlog, but in order to draw a hairstyle for her that I liked, I spent about 3 hours watching Black haircare videos on YouTube to get a feel for different typical styles for her hair texture and variations on those styles, and bookmarking the ones that felt like they had the right vibes. After that, I drew a mockup and sent it to a friend who has similar hair texture to Solea, and asked "does this hairstyle make sense?" and she said "yep!" so it was a go.

In terms of the rest of her design: I'm being intentionally vague here, but there are reasons she looks the way she does, and it took a lot of tweaking to get it to feel right. My favorite part is the ugly ass gardening gloves she's got on. Without those it still felt too Disney's Hercules-esque (especially the top half - her bottom half design fixes this somewhat, but you can't see it in the talksprite). But the big ugly functional gardening glove contrasting with her pretty flowing fabrics I think results in the right aesthetic for her.

The Witch:

It came to me in a dream.

OK, not really, what actually happened was I was thinking about Amadeus while lying in bed about to go to sleep, and for some reason imagined the witch who lives in his home now descending from the second floor banister looking like some abstract weird ass orange-red creature. It was one of those things where I was just like "that's weird as fuck. Kind of creepy. ...Let's do it." I remembered the head was circular with square "petals" protruding, and the bottom was kind of triangular, but since it was all made up in my head it wasn't that concrete. So when it came time to actually draw her, I drew from the stylized and very Shaped designs in Super Paper Mario, and tried to get it to feel close to the image in my head.

...It was only after coloring it that I realized it looks very, very Homestuck. This was probably a huge subconscious influence, but not for a second did I consciously consider it. If anything I think my initial daydream was inspired by an enemy from Final Fantasy VIII.

Anyway, hope this was somewhat interesting! Thanks for the ask!

[kaceypink]

From: https://pinkkacey.itch.io/modern-aeon/devlog/657382/post-mortum-i-sorta-regret-writing-a-trans-lesbian-elongated-muskrat

When I first started working on this story (I think back in 2021) I approached it with a desire solely to chase the themes present in the first part. The small dom with a lot of attitude, big dog service top who likes to get pulled around (a real masochist emotionally and physically). The bodyguard and her dark evil ceo lover. I followed a desire to write something inspired by the roaring 20s and the evil but thrilling wonder if an industrialists life. Paying people to have ideas for you, is a very old industrial capitalist thing. I wanted to show the glamor and the luxury of shinny leather, designer watches, tailored suits, and flowing dresses all on rough, beautiful lesbians. I think to an extent that first part really does convey that pretty well.

I have been thinking a lot about how Flur, even though she isn't as evil or manipulative as she wants people to think she is, is a capitalist in a way that I might never write again. My stomach has been so churned by Twitter falling apart. I wanted to write Flur sorta as a response too, ya know, what would a "good" person like this look like to me. What sorts of things would make up her mindset, how would she be radicalized away from great man theory and towards equity and labor rights. But you know, for all the good she has done in the story, she's still stolen people's wages and been a land lord and stuff. I know she's fictional, but I also I don't really believe there really can be such a thing as a "good industrialist" or "good capitalist" anymore. I guess that was my radicalization journey.

I wouldn't blame people for not connecting or even understanding the choice of character I wrote here. Ultimately though, her character is one of flipping people off and grabbing a failing world by the throat to right it for the better. Murdering your r*pist half brother in front of your family so you can steal the factory out from under him and keep the family from immolating in male chauvinist related debt does feel pretty wild. But whatever, I had fun. We can be wild ass from time to time. It's fine.

The novel opens with a peak at Flur's desire for equity for dragonkind, something that's not hidden but does grow in the background across the story to the point where it's implied she's selling weapons to a liberation movement in the southern part of the country. Flur actively lobbies against removing subways in the capital where she lives and does lots of her business. It would be more profitable to force everyone to buy a car with the engines she designed, but she still makes hand over fist selling them to train, subway, plane, and boat companies. By the end of the book she asks her workers to run her company for themselves, effectively becoming nothing more than a figure head a loud mouth piece. The story conveys a lot of that in the margins however, mostly because this isn't a story about Flur's company or her political actions.

The second part is where the story turns away from what was presented in the first part. The story isn't really about these two characters as bodyguard and CEO either, it's about their relationship and dealing with history. Things coming back to get you, litterally or emotionally. I think my favorite part of the whole novel is that masquerade, the way in which Tempest comes into her own and how she proves her love. I really like these two characters, I think about them a lot still.

The last couple parts I really struggled with, particularly the train part. I really wanted to write it well, and I think for the most part it's a strong bit of story with some weak areas. I really like the intro of family in there. The ending is a favorite, particularly the last chunk of these two living together and having a family feels very special to me. If you've read it, or it sounds interesting, I hope you feel the same.

I feel like if I were to ever come back to this story I would refine it to solely be based around that masquerade. I'd revise how the antagonist and the demon stuff works. It gets a big shonin anime, but that's fine. I'd also make it more clear how Flur's an anticapitalist disguised as a capitalist. I'd make the focus solely on the power of Tempest and Flur's love, though it is in this novel as well.

[moonanagames]

Good and bad news, CHECK THIS OUT PLZ

(are... are you ready)

Haro my fellow earthlings and interplanetarian folks!

Today I bring good and bad news altogether, so please bear with me for a bit! Firstly, I wanted to talk about how development has been going since the very beginning, so let us go to our nice time capsule :D

This is a timeline of the development up until now, I tried to be the most accurate as I could, but it can be a bit difficult when I don’t remember many things anymore lol

The game is in development since January 2017. The timeline goes like this:

2017

From January to May, 20, I developed on my own my first public demo of Virgo Vs The Zodiac. It took longer as I was all by myself.

Then my Grandma said she wouldn’t be able to support me anymore if I was going to quit college to develop games. From May to August, I prepared the Crowdfunding Campaign to help me fund the project and my EXISTENCE. The Campaign was launched in September 2017, I think.

After the campaign ended, I could finally get Anglerman onboard! Ay! He does animations for enemies and some party members animations too and is also the greatest deity of our lives. A legend. He helped me a lot with the Game Design Document I was working on because new people would join and I needed to make the things in my head to be a bit more concrete.

From the end of the Campaign until October we were working with a another programmer, but that didn’t work too well since they had another big project they were working on at the time. We had to change the programmer. It was when I found Ben here on Tumblr, current lead programmer. Our lord and savior.

After that I was browsing tumblr randomly and I found Veyerals among asks sent to this tumblr and thought his work with menus was pretty cool (and I liked his game as well, played a lot of that back then). Veyerals joined the project too as the UI programmer and would also be working with the SHMUP mini games, which he had experience with. Bless the UI G.O.D.

From that point on we had to basically rebuild the game from scratch from the moment we got the new programmers. Not only develop the game from scratch, but doing everything RPG Maker already had built in for us into the new engine because that was the only thing I knew in terms of “programming”. That and adding everything new I thought for the project. It was a huge amount of work, and we only had a battle system working fine in December, where we started developing a new build.

(concept art of lady nurse)

2018

In this year things got a bit complicated!

At first, when the battle system was mainly “complete”, as we thought back then, we delivered a 15 mins build for ID@XBOX to be shown at the Game Developers Conference, on January 2018.

We had billions of problems from january to august with the development and also unrelated to the development, like dealing with US taxes. A lot of things weren't working as we wanted them to be, this time was mostly spent on making the timed hits to feel nice, rebuilding the base systems and trying to make the game to have the same feeling as the RPG Maker build had of it being challenging. Also, overall asset production. That was demanding as heck. In RPG Maker the enemies didn't move, while in Game Maker they were animated. I had never worked with Game Maker before, so me and Anglerman (the animator and fellow game designer) had to learn the engine from scratch while developing the game, that resulted in a lot of set backs, but lead us to where we are now. We're confident with the overall game's scaling, difficulty, battles and systems. In Game Maker the maps are also bigger and have way more polishing, so that took a lot of time to get used to on the new engine.

(a really weird, but solved, bug)

From that point on we built Capricorn, and started working on Taurus and other realms at the same time. After some time we determined that doing several realms at the same time, even though we knew which level the player would be wouldn't work well, and we decided to finish the realms before heading to other realm.

Billion lines of code later, in october we started development of the first 2 hours and a half of Taurus. All of it took one month and a half. It was a significant improvement from the previous 5 months to develop the same amount of gameplay! We determined that we can finish the game on the first half on 2019 upon seeing the progress of the development in Taurus. Now we have a stable work flow, as our lead programmer only has to work on random tiny things, for example, "I would like for Virgo to throw Alpacas for an event, can you add that?". Those are small details that Ben can do easily. Everything that was promised on the campaign, like SHMUP minigames and the crafting system is also all working nicely and well.

That brings us to the bad news: The release will be delayed, for all the reasons exposed before. At first we thought of keeping with the date announced in the Crowdfunding Campaign of December 4th and release the game in Early Access. However it all seemed unfair to the Beta Backers who donated first to get access to early builds of the game. Other than that, a save system of something like a RPG such as Virgo Vs The Zodiac wouldn’t work well with the early access system of Steam. Just imagine your save messing up every time the game is updated. That would be just bad. xD Unfortunately I didn’t know that back then when I announced the date, and I didn’t know the amount of hassle I would go through to learn the engine while developing the game. I can only blame my naiveness, honestly. Other than that, December isn’t a good time to release games because of the Steam Sale that makes it harder for new games to be noticed with so many games on sale.

With that being clarified, I can say now that the game would most likely be released in the first half of 2019, around Q2. I apologize deeply and am extremely sad, I was even avoiding saying this here and avoiding social medias in general due to anxiety attacks <_< I’m sorry for that as well! For anyone who said their birthday was in the same day as the game’s release, I apologize immensely, and please send me a message and I’ll send you a card of Sagittarius wishing you a happy birthday. It’s the only thing I can do now, to be honest. S O R R Y =(

O U T R A G E O U S

New possible release date: Q2 2019.

As for the good news now:

Taurus Realm Build For Backers

The Taurus build I was talking about will be sent to backers this week! :D You can expect a bossfight with a Zodiac, millions of new characters, around 1800 new lines of dialogues, new equipment to check, new fellows to beat or spare, quests and the SHMUP minigame, now implemented on the game! Also, as seen on the trailer, you can throw enemies off screen now :3

Kinda Funny Games Showcase

We’ll also be participating on Kinda Funny’s Games Showcase that’ll be happening in December 8th! You’ll be able to see a new trailer of Virgo Vs The Zodiac on the stream that’ll be happening on Kinda Funny’s Twitch. That’s a really cool opportunity for us, so eternal thanks to Greg Miller for chosing VvtZ. That got me by surprise! xD

Date: Saturday, December 8th

Time: 10am PT

I think that’s it! Basically we had a lot of setbacks, but we’re in the right path again now and I can say doing anything is faster as is! The game’s quality improved and the development became more demanding of our skills, but it’s also a nice challenge for everyone. I’m glad to have started this project, my life was pretty dull back then, I had lost many important things before and VvtZ brought sparkle back to my life. That’s important, as even in the most difficult times I can remember I’m creating something I have so much fun with. I’m blessed to have all the people who support me on Virgo Vs The Zodiac discord, who supported me in the campaign and everyone around social medias. It’s what makes my days happier, tbh.

Ever since I began development I lost contact with many of my friends from the other city I lived in, but I also made many other precious friends who helped me along the way! All the good and bad memories on my life shaped this place I created for myself in the world. I like this place, it’s comfy :3 Again, I’m sorry for ruining your expectations to have the game up on Steam this year, it’s a first delaying the development like this. As a Taurus I can say it pains the most to not have things done when I need them to be despite the hard work going behind this game. Damned Bugs. I want the bugs to die. Gotta work even harder from now on to extinguish bugs the maximum we can!

[crescencestudio]

Devlog #32 | 06.27.23

Hi everyone!

I'm here! With an Update! This is an exciting one because I am Finally releasing a Full! Game! <3 I will obviously still be talking about Alaris, but I am vibrating with excitement because I can't wait to release intertwine to you all! THE RELEASE DATE APPROACHES

Writing

Because we entered crunch mode for intertwine, this month was mostly focused on continuing to fill out Druk's route and my dissertation.

I didn't make as much progress on Druk's route as I would've liked (I was hoping to FINISH it, but Otojam crunch wrecked my ass). But I do have most of the route finished! At this point, I only have the final chapter to go, so we are Very Close! Druk's route is shaping up to be a really fun one. I like to sprinkle humor into all the routes, but because of Druk's character, there are a lot of funny (at least to me) cast interactions. I hope people enjoy it as much as I do because I have a big fat crush on him now!

Regarding editing, we are just about rounding out the last of Fenir's developmental edits (courtesy of local superhero dev Wudgeous of Herotome) and Kayn's line edits (courtesy of local royalty IF writer Vi of Next in Line). With Fenir's script coming up on the last of the developmental edits, that is basically two routes that are going to be ready for beta-testing after the updated demo, which is very exciting! I am extremely happy with how Fenir's route has turned out after some developmental revisions, and I hope you all like the sweet little (grumpy) baby's route!

Art

Again, most (all) of my attention was on intertwine art assets this month. I was focused on the rest of the GUI, sprite expression, and CGs so that the game will be ready for release at the end of this month!

I'm really happy with how intertwine has come out visually considering the two month time crunch! Many of the playtesters mentioned how they liked the GUI and overall aesthetic of the game, which---for my pea-sized brain that has no object permanence when it comes to compliments---meant the world to me!

Review of intertwine Screenshots (left to right, starting at the top row): Main Menu Screen, Options/Preferences Screen, In-Game Dialogue Preview, Exhibit Preview

For Alaris, I did still get some new backgrounds from Vui, and while they are beautiful, I can no longer share them since they venture into spoiler territory. Sorry folks!

I have a sneak peek of a little Something Something.

Adorable emotes for a certain Something Something! That's all I will leave you with for now <3

Additional Notes

I spent A LOT of this month coding. I re-entered programming hell to get intertwine up and running. There were a lot of features that I coded for the first time, like a texting interface, some animations, and one Special, Very Game-Centric Feature That I Can't Disclose Due to Extreme Spoilers. It was really rewarding to see it all come together, and I am pretty happy with the end result ^^

You don't even know the hell I went through to customize this texting feature

We also have a lovely voice actor for Van, which we revealed on Twitter. Max has been an amazing talent to work with, and I am in love with the way he brought Van to life!!

Finally, I spontaneously ended up working with Orpheo Fenn and Kija of Faefield Productions for a custom intertwine soundtrack. I've been wanting to work with them for a while, so I'm so happy we were able to collab!

No market research this month, except for the fact that I played Tears of the Kingdom a little bit in my free time ^^ I am so in love with Link. Also, I didn't see the appeal to Sidon in the first game, but for some reason in this game, It Clicked. Like I Get It.

That's all from me for this month. Look forward to an intertwine release in the coming days! I'm excited to get back into Alaris full-swing this upcoming month. I didn't think I'd feel this way after feeling oversaturated with them for a hot minute, but I miss my Alaris gang <3 See you all next month, and stay safe!

[spacezeta]

Devlog - Getting the main menu right

So! Like I said in the last devlog, I’ve been ironing out the kinks of the game and to do that, I started right at the the splash screen and main menu! Because who knew you had to start the game to actually start the game!

the main menu looks pretty now

So I went and did the splash screen - language selection screen - main menu - load game menu (which is actually the save/load menu but since I wasn’t happy with the way it looked, I changed it). I set up the whole thing with a Manager (persistent) Level that controls the actual start of the game and the language selection, with a Main Menu Level that deals with, well, the main menu, and a separate Base Level that’s the level of the whole game (since it’s just one big-ish map).

I still need to test out the loading part and see if I haven’t broken anything (I mean, it was working the last time I checked but you know...)

So, let’s talk about the main menu!

Hello to the reference board!

To go with the PS2-ish (and some PS1 and a GameCube thrown in there) aesthetic, I wanted to recreate the feeling of a main menu from that era’s horror games and boy this was (still is?) hard. Like with most things in this game, it was hard figuring out the balance between purposefully low-res and just plain ugly. And I definitely made some ugly things that I tried to convince myself looked ‘retro’, but on a second look... no.

My first approach was to go with a grunge-y style, since that worked on the game’s textures, but then it didn’t look quite right.

It looked like it was stuck between that era and the modern times, which isn’t really a good look

So I went back to my reference board to figure out why it looked wrong. What I noticed is that those menus either a: had one of those fancy-for-its-time 3D rendered images as a background, or b: had a somewhat cartoon-ish look to the background and logo*.

* What I mean by cartoon-ish look is that, for instance, if you take a look at the Clock Tower 3 one, they had the clock image that looked like it had been drawn instead of a pre-rendered or real image of a clock (as well as the general appearance of the text in the logo). Both Fatal Frame 1 and Haunting Ground had similar aesthetics as well.

This had me scratching my head because my logo had none of those things... oops. I tried switching it up a little, but didn’t want to stray too far from the current one because that’s already the game’s logo. So I tried a bunch of different things, from using a (not really pre-rendered because it was prototyping) image as background, to more grunge, to a more minimalistic approach, ended up with a few happy accidents (one of which I’ll clean up to use a some promo art and possibly the save menu background) and then ended up with what I have now.

Also, I made the logo much bigger because, I mean, look at the reference board. Subtlety apparently didn’t exist back then. (Also bigger/higher def screens, but, you know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

The main menu, now with transitions!

I kinda like it, but that’s also how I felt above the previous version of the menu so we’ll see I guess. At least it’s good enough that if I don’t have the time to change it later it’s not ugly as hell!

The one thing still missing though: It needs to have some big ass white text at the bottom with like COPYRIGHT © something something for it to feel truly authentic

I swear it was a thing

So I got the main menu done, including transitions and stuff (sound effects TBD tho). Also got the starting a new game bit done, though I skipped the intro scenes so I’ll have to put those back in later. Next stop in UI shenanigans: Save/Load Screen!

[shroomishthecuck]

Devlog #2

So... You come here often?

Hey! Welcome back I this is totally a week after the last devlog I definitely didn't get simultaneously busy and lazy hahahahahahahahahhahaha anyway

hi

how's it going

how are the kids

...

um

(I never know how to start these lmao)

I haven't really done much since we last talked, considering I had to prepare for finals and all.

Now that it's finals week tho, I actually have way less work to do at home and way more time to work on the game.

Plus, after this week, I have Christmas break until January 7th, so I can get way more work done :)

So I said I was gonna do the battle system, right? That means I did it, right? I made the battle system? The battle system that I literally said I'd make?

NOPE!

I started working on the dialogue system tho

Here's the script! :)

And yes, I am making the dialogue system by myself with no plugins. You can bow down to me later.

This is a video of the dialogue system in action

As you can hear, I also have dialogue sounds (it was really easy to implement)

The Dialogue sounds were courtesy of Alan Dalcastagne! These sounds are actually really good and there's a huge variety of them and this guy's just giving it out for free so please check him out :)

The font I used is Cute Dino, courtesy of Khurasan on Dafont. Don't know if I'll use it in the final game but we'll see :/

Partway through making the dialogue system, I did have a problem where Godot would crash when I tried to use the dialogue system more than once. And not like the game crashed, Godot itself crashed

Thankfully, I took this issue to the Godot Forum and was thankfully able to get a solution really quickly (turns out I was just being a big dumbass lmao)

So yeah, lesson of the day, use the Godot Forum. The people on there are really nice and helpful and it's really easy to use and I will be using it a lot more from now on

Plans for the future

Since I'll have so much more time on my hands, I'll probably try to finish up the dialogue system. I plan on using arrays to make pages of text, making an actual textbox instead of the placeholder graphic, having a tail that points to the person talking, the works. I also want to try making a function so that if a piece of dialogue is longer than would fit in the textbox, it automatically gets broken up and turned into an array. I just really want to make this system as automatic as possible to make my life easier in the future. If I finish that quickly, I'll probably start working on NPCs and interactable objects, maybe make more than one type of textbox, try and get text effects like making it shake or move in a wave or change color. Anything necessary to make sure you know how these goofy ass mfs are talking. I also intend to put more comments in my code so that I know what stuff is and don't get lost, especially as this game gets bigger. I'm kinda in the boring programming part right now, but pretty soon we'll get to the fun part where I can make cutscenes and design battles and write dumb jokes and playtest and all that fun shit

Anyway, that's about it. Hopefully I'll have more to talk about next week. Speaking of, next week is Christmas Eve! Guess I chose a good time to start doing these. Bye :)

[kinocomix]

devlog 18: doo dads, inventories and recycling like responsible authors.

The script for TSTW is 17 scenes long so far, still in progress. I estimate it will be around 30 to 40, which is a welcome change given that my last comic was around 110. with that in mind…

would you believe me if i said i spent an entire day looking for an extremely specific book that i used to own- well two actually now that i think about it. I didn’t find them. One of them was a book with a bunch of electronic crafts for kids, the other was this book where you’re supposed to tear the pages to make everything from a chessboard to a cup. Not important, the point is Brandon Sanderson said something very insightful about writing characters that are smarter than you: being smart, often, is a matter of how much time you have to solve a problem. We consider someone as being smart when they very quickly have a good answer to a given question. The reason I was looking for two random ass books I owned as a kid is because I have the time to figure out how the kids are going to channel their inner bear grylls to improvise, adapt, overcome. they do not.

today, we’re going to be figuring out what we can realistically get away with as far as child inventions go, as well as talking about how as artists, reusing work is normal and shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.

So first things first: what do the kids in our story have access to? this was the easiest to figure out because I know what living situations most of them experience, so here’s a list:

killouette: stationary and a camera. I’m still unsure which time period the story takes place in, so it’s unsure whether or not the camera is digital. It's objectively more fun if it’s a polaroid camera, because then all her pictures are physical. This is a plus because the only person with a computer in the group is talbas. On the other hand, setting the story in the mid 2000s means she probably has a small digital camera that she could connect to a bigger screen. alternatively, if i choose to set the story in the present, she could have both. unwanted old cameras left in a drawer somewhere.

bata tete: fun craft tools (paint, glue, string, ribbons, a big pile of magazines), a basket and a printer. you can’t go wrong with paint and pictures if you’re writing a story about kids, and this is also helpful because it introduces additional things to bata tete’s character: a more artsy side to complement the mission impossible stuff. instinctively i’m thinking the strings are definitely going to serve as trip wires at some point or another, and paper mache is definitely going to be involved in some way.

falefil: a po box, a piano and an electronic voice recorder. My current headcanon for falefil is that he doesn’t really like toys, so minus getting aluminum foil from his mom’s kitchen, he can probably lend his electronic voice recorder to accomplish something. maybe a makeshift MP3 player?

zmik: toys and objects intended to be used with other kids. all unused. I’ll admit this the saddest one by a longshot but it hits home a bit too hard to not include. I remember the piles of old board games, slingshots, marbles, even -the irony- a pair of walkie talkies I had that just… sat there. I like to imagine Zmik is finally in a place where he can share these things with people he likes.

motsik: broken knick knacks, pieces of mirror, detergents, bent spoons, a lot of wooden kabab skewers. It should come as no surprise that most of what Motsik has to offer is broken to some capacity, because of his violent household. the things he brings are broken because he effectively fishes them out of the trash, figuring his friends might have something they could do with them. note: motsik could also try to make stuff himself, but given his character this would be infrequent.

talbas: her uncle has an electronic equipment store, he teaches her stuff and low key is in on some of the shenanigans the kids do. despite the neglect from her parents, talbas loves spending time with her uncle whose store is nearby. he loves the fact that she’s interested in soldering and making fun doodads, so he has a budget set aside just for her. it’s pretty obvious that talbas’ uncle is the only person tethering her to a sense of purpose and a feeling of love. 

claude: a lot of organic things and the knowledge thereof. Claude has little in the way of possessions, but she has a lot of street smarts. Claude keeps track of inventory across the 6 kids’s houses and frequently is the first to suggest solutions to problems.

with that being figured out, all we need to do to try to combine what they have with what the problem is and we see what comes out the other end. for example:

let’s say they need all hands on deck for something but that means ignoring a hallway where someone could come see what they’re doing. we know they would have access to stuff like strings, empty spools, simple electrical components and tin foil, so they could for example make a small trip wire using one of several methods i thought up:

this one is a pressure pad you can hide under a carpet that sets off a small light or beeper.

this one is a single use tripwire that would not require miles of electrical wire lol.

two things to note: the actual schematics in the book are going to look much nicer but also i’m approaching writing this book with publishing in mind, so I’m steering clear of actually dangerous things like blades and anything stronger than a small battery. which is a shame- i have a very funny story about how i personally once nearly set my building on fire trying to make a lamp when i was like 11, but that’s not the kind of stuff that will get published for middle grade/early young adult readers. I hate having to squash my book into a category like this, but if i’m to have any hope of doing what i love for the rest of my life, this feels like a necessary sacrifice. 

now, as an aside, let’s talk about something I personally do that I think might be helpful to others and I’m going to illustrate my point by sharing spoilers for a project I won't get to for another couple of years. 

Around 2014 was my very first attempt at writing something. it was a story called “Last of the Predators”, a very angsty attempt at something serious written by a version of me with no connection to the subject matter whatsoever. it had no plot outline, end in mind or clearly defined characters. Everyone spoke in the same monotone calm way and every paragraph had way too much description of the person’s emotional state. I eventually lost interest and dropped it, even deleting the blog I had been using to document the updates on. 

shortly after I started making comics, i came up with the ice cream men: a story that follows two aliens kicked off their planet who arrive on earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably bringing up a million other topics along the way. This might sound fun, but when I came up with it at the time it didn’t feel enough to justify the commitment it would require. it initially focused too much on jokes and really didn’t have much to offer in the way of depth. so i shelved the idea for a while and this is the piece of advice i have:

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them. 

around this time is where my studies got in the way. When you’re just starting out trying to make art, everything stops you dead in your tracks. It wasn't until I started working on illustrating almost home that the creative gears started turning again. I came up with a whole bunch of things, but some of what I did is revisit my folder of abandoned projects. Sometimes when a project feels dull, it can be helpful to merge it with another one. This doesn’t always work but when it does it can lead to very interesting results.  This is what I did with the ice cream men. I took the philosophical premise of the ice cream men which suffered from an underdeveloped plot and bad setting that didn’t suit the theme, and I combined it with the idea that survived after I cut all the slack out of Last of the predators which is the following:

The world LOTP is set in suffered a cataclysmic event that killed all the animals. Humans being how they are, they quickly built a religion around this and decided that some people have “predator souls” while others have “prey souls”, even going as far as to genetically engineer the way people look to introduce animalistic features to faces and bodies. The story is very political in nature and revolves around this role reversal that happens many many years after the cataclysm… and that’s where all the bullshit comes into play that I cut out. 

As a side note, what I just told you is the polished version of the lore I rewrote for this devlog- it’s not the one I decided to settle on for the ice cream men but I'm sharing it regardless for the sake of documentation. point is: the reason this felt relevant to me is because combining this with the ice cream men added a layer of intrigue to the story which i really liked:

two aliens are kicked off their planet and arrive on a deserted planet which the reader knows is earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably discovering more about this strange planet and its past… 

That past is the yet untold story of LOTP, with a less shitty name and more consideration given to the themes and mechanics of the things at play. so effectively we have several narrative layers at play:

the ice cream thing which could be a commentary on purpose or the creative process in addition to being a fun jumping off point for comedic relief

the past of the planet which could offer some mystery to the story, and maybe encourage some more serious topics to be brought up

and a third secret one, that i’m not willing to share just yet.

which i think is a story more worth telling. Here's another example more immediately relevant to our devlog. two years ago, I was thinking about how funny it would be to have unnecessarily complicated contraptions in the kitchen. the type of stuff you see unemployed engineers do for social media instead of benefiting mankind. I asked myself how would you go about making those contraptions useful: maybe someone could benefit from them if they were for example disabled, cool. too straightforward for my liking. What if they were small? like… as small as a bug? a very small chef. 

how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall. that sounds fun i like it. What if it was a cookbook where part of the instructions were these complicated instructions on how to build and solder electronics? fun! I need a chef and an engineer to do that. I am neither. 

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them. 

I kept thinking about that for a while. I imagined our protagonist Claude, a small hercules beetle who loves to cook. I wrote three versions of the script of a comic and even discussed making it a short animation at some point, but it didn’t feel right. it’s not the vision. It needs to be a cookbook.

queue Killouette and the fact that I’m really annoyed at how the camera can see everything. I remembered the idea I had with the cookbook, so I thought why not borrow some of that and make it a diary?  Let’s add Claude in there as well for good measure. Maybe then how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall can be the one that comes after Killouette if I’m lucky enough to get funding. A grown Claude who made it big as a cook. By combining the two projects into two parts of the same series, I fixed the problem I had with the camera and added continuity to two otherwise one off projects. 

So maybe that’s something to keep in mind. don’t throw away ideas, shelve them instead. 

Next week we’ll be looking into the supplementary children’s book attached to killouette.

devlog updates on tuesdays. 

[kinocomix]

untitled project devlog 8: themes, and pain

At first, when I said I wanted to discuss the themes of my project, I thought that maybe there would be some convenient article, book or philosophy deep dive I could reference, which does not seem to be much the case, seeing as how my approach to themes is very personal. so… here’s some thoughts.

In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, the story features a band and music quite prominently. One of my original elevator pitches for the comic was “think metalocalypse meets bandslam, but with the scope of Ernest et Celestine and the presentation of a black and white Wes Anderson film” which is the vaguest shit ever and I’ll eventually get my head out of my ass long enough to stop worrying about spoiling the story. My point is: the act of being creative is at the forefront of the story. What drives it forward is something I won’t mention in this series, but a lot of ideas emerge when you decide to write something as personal as making art. Things like purpose, belonging, self worth, expression, communication, validation are things that every artist or musician deals with quite regularly and no story about creativity would be complete without them.

The first post ever made to this blog was a webcomic name fancomic that, looking back, isn’t bad but remembering the reason why I made it is what makes me cringe. I wanted attention. When I started making art I expected to be famous in 100 days. literally, I wish I was exaggerating. 

In every artist’s journey with art, they reach the point where they realize that the only things really worth pursuing are the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes this is drawing commissions, other times people do commissions to keep themselves alive. A lot of times, the art people are passionate about barely gets any attention at all. It's a fact that a lot of creatives secretly know that people who get successful doing something they love are very lucky. 

It takes maturity to be happy for people and proud of their hard work as opposed to being an envious child but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want success as well. If I could have enough dedicated readers to make my comics for a living but never be famous I’d do that in a heartbeat. Every big shiny thing is destined to accumulate dust, I don’t want to be a big shiny thing, I want to be a reliable hill you can trust to be there year after year. It took me a while to get to the mindset I work with today. 6 years might not feel like a lot when you consider the insane careers some artists had, but as far as people go 6 years is a lot. I graduated, finished a book, worked on 2 short film productions that have both won awards (one of which for my sound design!!), moved house, freelanced, started a stable job, been to therapy, gotten an operation, nearly lost people, been through an explosion, an economic collapse; and I think that’s just the stuff I’m remembering off the top of my head. 

Finding documentation and sources about this kind of stuff is pretty difficult because this is not what gets publicized about media. However, if you pay enough attention some similarities start to appear.

The manga Berserk is pretty famous for its elaborate artwork and story. It doesn’t really need an intro and I’ve been told I need to read it which I plan on, but that’s not the point right now. As you may know, Kentaro Miura, the author and illustrator of the manga passed away in 2021. For fans of the series, while very tragic, this wasn’t all that surprising. The dude doesn’t fill in black. he crosshatches everything. An admirable feat, which makes you thankful that a friend of his, Kouji Mori, decided to finish making the manga after he passed away. 

Many other manga share this. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, has been known to frequently go on hiatus. So has Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi. A lot of times, an artist’s undying faith to their work is because of how passionate they are about it, the people involved in making it or even the audience. I forget the exact interview this is from, but Linkin park has gone on record for saying that sometimes they need to consider the audience. you see them always excited to talk about how experimental their music is, which is great, but when you know someone’s on the receiving end of what you’re making, it’s bound to make you think a bit differently. 

This video of George RR Martin and Stephen King chatting kind of outlines the different approaches they have to writing. One of the most iconic quotes is “how do you write so fast?” Spoken by Martin. Now I’m not here to talk about Game of Thrones, trust me I couldn't care less but it does bring up one point worth talking about which is inspiration, discipline and what that has to do about your malleability as an artist.

This is the trailer for H.E.R.A., one of the short movies I worked on as a sound designer and general handyman. It was written and animated by my friend Alaa Fleifel with the help of some wonderful fellow artists and animators for some of the scenes. Alaa and his studio Phat Chik are an example of what I’m talking about.

pictured: Alaa. 

When I talk about being malleable, I don’t mean that in the X-men mystique “I chameleon my way around the world” school of art though that can work in some cases, sure. What I refer to is one’s ability to keep making their art. During the production of H.E.R.A., there were at many points obstacles that would have shot down most movie productions. The sound designer had to prioritize staying alive so he had to unfortunately quit the project midway. Alaa had to juggle a fulltime job, commissions and a rapidly decaying economic system that meant most clients didn’t want to pay well anymore so he had to outsource some of the background art and scenes to friends and animators that he paid out of pocket. The production timeline lasted a year and 8 months, most of that time was spent patching up the team in the background. Working on H.E.R.A. taught me that there is no project in existence that is the result of one human being. Everyone has at least one person to give them advice, someone who goes “hey, I know a guy” and very often that is not just one person. When band line ups change, it’s sometimes treated with an air of disregard.

“oh, it’s just the drummer”

“it’s the rhythm guitarist, their job is pretty easy anyway”

Had Alaa waited around for inspiration or permission to make his film, it would have never happened. Sure, a lot of why we get to watch the absurdist sci-fi acid trip that is H.E.R.A. is due to some luck and connections, but a lot of it is also due to a rejection of the notion that inspiration is what primarily fuels creativity. 

So what does that say about the story? usually I find it helpful to present my themes in the form of questions, so here’s what i’ve been able to come up with:

Who does art/music belong to?

How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation? 

How do you balance making stuff for yourself and an audience once you have one?

How much does inspiration really matter?

I need to be honest with you about something. 

I’ve been kind of avoiding talking about the more… personal themes at play here.

it’s not because I don’t know what they are, really. They just come from a place of deep discomfort and humiliation for me. I’ve obviously become a much different human being over the course of my 27 years on the rapidly traveling rock in space but it’s never not weird for me remembering the dumb things I did or said growing up or while I was finding my footing as a writer. There are entire projects and dozens of pages of things that I threw out the window before I felt confident enough in something to be able to share it. there’s a lot of fucking up you do while growing up and not surprisingly, I feel more comfortable seeing my weird feelings in fiction than I do laid out in bullet points in a devlog. So I promise you this:

the people in the story are going to be human. Faults, warts and all. The only thing I ask of you is to know that while those warts are real, they are not mine anymore. Every day that passes, I grow a little bit more, and maybe at some point I’ll grow tall enough that the light trickling through the trees will feel safe enough to fly.

Merry Christmas, and may every year bring a little bit more sun.

Devlog updates on tuesdays.