omorimodreverie

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Devlog - March 2025

Intro

March is here, which means it’s time for another Devlog! This may be the final log for Chapter 4, as we approach the finish line. We’ve made a lot of progress ever since the New Year, so let's get straight to it.

Progress

A major amount of progress has been made, this time mostly on the battles - as it's one of the later things to be polished.

Restructuring

ALL enemy data has been restructured to a new system, for ease of development.

- In technical terms, each enemy now occupies one slot in the RPGmaker data editor instead of the base game’s four.

As a result, all previous enemy AIs have now been standardized based on emotion, as opposed to being hard coded percentage differences (With exceptions for certain bosses).

- Angry increases the chances of offensive skills.

- Sad increases the chances of defensive skills.

- Happy increases the chance of special skills (less chance to use a basic attack).

- Drop rates based on emotion have also been standardized to be consistent.

Fixed a lot of broken or unintended AI behavior in Chapter 1 and 2. Some are also getting a total overhaul, like Kite Kid.

Others

Extra area maps are now finished; these are singular large maps to explore, with extra rewards and battles.

Most new enemies now have AI.

Some skills have been rebalanced and tweaked for functionality. Namely, AOE emotion skills are now acquired before level 20 and are usable on both sides.

The majority of equipment and charms have been implemented, with some being buyable or extra challenge rewards.

Quality of life changes, with ailments being visible with particle effects.

Common buffs and basic attacks are now standardized to use the same skill and state across different enemies. This is also so translators do not need to translate the same exact basic attack 40 times.

An accessible guide book has been added that lists the gameplay changes that have been made in the mod.

What’s Next

Extra area gameplay, mostly setting up troops and meaningful reasons to go there.

Extra optional area cutscenes; these tend to be smaller.

Properly make the ending scene for Chapter 4.

Some skill animations. 

Moving on into early playtesting.

Final Notes

We’ve made tremendous progress so far, and chapter 4 is now nearing release. This is likely to be the final devlog for Chapter 4.

Anyways, as a thanks for reading this far, here's a teaser for a battle theme for the Castle area.

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Devlog - 2025 January

Intro

New Year has just passed and now we are in 2025, which also means a new Dev log!

This log is a relatively shorter one in terms of progress made, as the majority of work  happened in November, as December was busy for almost everyone. Instead, part of the focus in this devlog will concern management during times of low activity.

Progress

Main writing properly reviewed

Aside from major cutscenes and dialogue-heavy writing, work was also finalized on any transition scenes that will lead to the next chapter.

Gameplay progress testing started

A lot of things are still missing, but the chapter is playable for the main progression.

Testing was done to ensure that the chapter can be accessed through previous chapter (Ch. 3) save files.

Miscellaneous RPGMV work

Various minor bug fixes, as well as cutscene tweaks.

While no major implementation was done, it still added up to quite a lot of work.

Enemy AI brainstormed and drafted

These are just drafts for now, however, and proper testing with stats will take place later on

What’s Next

As of now, a decent chunk of people in the team are still on a well-deserved break - January will likely not see any major spike in activity. At this point, identifying specific tasks needed to be completed is sometimes tricky, even when a lot of things are obviously missing.

The probable first thing on our task list is simply playing through what we have so far, and looking for anything missing: ranging from technical bugs, to gameplay aspects (communicating where to go next or balancing in battles).

For those interested, at the moment the majority of RPGMV related tasks are hooked on the Github Project of the REVERIE project repository. Even though I was out for over a month, I did manage to list a bunch of tasks requiring completion while playing through in advance. It is likely that something similar will be done for this month as well.

As for a specific list of those tasks (that I can publicly talk about):

Extra optional areas - these are after the main chapter bosses and optional challenges. They tend to be large and have more winding paths, but are only 1-3 maps.

Extra optional fights, similar to above, but specific battles. Chapter 4 will come with a dedicated optional area, unlike the chapters that came before.

Creating and implementing the ending cutscene, though this is pretty much the final thing on the to-do list.

Playtesting and balancing various combat side gameplay.

Making skill animations, if time and resources permit

Final Notes

Overall, the past 2 months have been more lackluster in terms of progress, but that is usual and to be expected during Winter break / New Year (as most people get busy). I myself have been almost completely offline for over a month, so even I need to catch up on the work done so far: that's the reason why this dev log is a bit delayed.

Anyways, as a thanks for reading this far, here's a teaser for a battle theme for The Dungeon area and a preview of a battle gimmick there!

(It might seem a bit strange to separate battle themes for a minor areas; it's a remnant from trying to manage music in advance way back since Chapter 2)

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Devlog - 2024 October

Intro

It’s been another 2 months now since the last dev log and Halloween has just passed. So it's time for a dev log!

This one also will be kept concise as a list of things like last time. Progress is a bit mixed with progress being mostly in the first months, while later months are more stagnant as I got busy and unable to organize (Hopefully that will change right now, as I got stuff out of the way).

Progress

Progress list is a bit short as a list, but each one of these is a major task.

Most of main writing is done, and story planning is pretty solidified now.

Half of main cutscenes are either done or have basic foundation laid out - (though is not connected to main game progression yet)

Gameplay is at least playable to some degree now (compared to before where it's all disconnected events in a dev room)

What’s Next

The main bottleneck as of current has now shifted to RPGMV implementation, a large reason is from me also being busy and unable to organize though, so I wasn't able to greenlight or check a lot of work to continue (usually writing, requires discussion with multiple people), or I myself hasn't worked on RPGMV.

The major RPGMV tasks right now are:

Other half of major cutscenes

Connecting those said cutscene into actual progressable gameplay

Checking the gameplay itself, as focus was dead set on cutscene (due to it being large) it hasn't been looked into for a while.

Other tasks also exists but can be done in parallel:

Flavor texts and NPCs writing (And implementation)

Other writings, like Foe Facts or Guide item

Minor skill animations (Some basic enemies just reuse copies of base game as of current)

Optional dungeon areas

Hyper-realistic Bear (I will not elaborate)

Some area music, Castle area music in particular needed changes

Tangentially - there is some idea that some areas might work better with slowed down variation of base game themes. This is not confirmed though, it might seem lazy compared to Fallen World having a unique area theme; will have to look into it.

Final Notes

Overall, the progress was mixed, the first half had some progress and the latter half was stagnant as I wasn't able to organize things due to being busy. I am a bit more available now though so I may be able to bump things into gear for November; December is very likely to also slow down from breaks for most people so it's ideally earlier.

Thanks for reading this far, here's battle music for Pyrefly Forest (and an enemy) for checking out! 

Full Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOfIJ7JhMTE 

Fiery. Comedic joke!!!!! Laugh!!!!!

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Devlog - 2024 August

Intro

It’s been 2 months now since the last dev log and ending of summer break, which means it’s time for another!

This one will be kept concise as a list of things, as there isn’t much special thing that happened in the timeframe that need additional explaining

Progress

Progress has been made generally in all sectors this time, to list:

Enemy sprites are all finished! (Some extras were added later)

Basic gameplay battle started to be done

Writing started on flavor text

Some extra music is done (As previously mentioned, due to plan changes)

Early progression is somewhat playable

Miscellaneous small things like equipments sprites

More map works

There is also more indirect work like organization like usual, especially in breaks where some are busy.

What’s Next

The list here might seem short, but some tasks are quite a large task, like cutscenes.

Writing finalization

Cutscene work in RPGMaker 

Polishing maps

Slight changes to previous chapters

Playtesting

Balancing

Out of the list the main bottleneck here is now RPGMaker side of things, specifically cutscenes. Unlike Chapter 3, pixel art and mapping are done fairly early on, as that chapter just had so much work on the pixel art side that the momentum makes it pretty fast when it comes to this chapter with far less work.

So far with current planning, proper side quests and puzzles are very minimal. There is still plenty of side content in terms of battle and an optional area, but other than that, those events tend to be time consuming to make and maintain in RPGMaker.

Final Notes

Overall, it’s a very usual progress, nothing out of the ordinary. Decent amount of progress, but still a decent amount to go as well, especially with RPGMaker side.

Thanks for reading this far, here's battle music for Metro B2 for checking out!

Full Link: https://youtu.be/g5XUpkyO6f4 

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Devlog - 2024 July - CHAPTER 4

Overview

It has been a while since the last update since before the release of Reverie Chapter 3, so we finally are making an update on what happened in the past 3-4 months.

What’s with the Inactivity?

First, let’s get the reasons for our inactivity (at least to public) out of the way:

Chapter 3 released around April-May, so that period would be redundant to cover in a Dev Log in that time period.

Around the same period, some people have had high school finals (like in my case, Stahl writing here), or college exams. 

Despite that, there has been steady work done in the background by others in the team. The past few weeks have also picked up in activity as well, so things are moving in a positive direction.

Chapter 4 Info

Area

As it’s no longer a much secret since it's been speculated since forever ago: Chapter 4 takes place in dreamworld. The next area involves 1 major area, Sweetheart’s Castle; and 2 minor optional areas, Pyrefly Forest and Metro Depths. This info is relevant to development, as it changes the development process quite significantly.

The obvious benefit is that many assets can be reused and modified, especially for the castle. What will be done with it though, we’ll leave up to speculation. This applies to tilesets, maps, and even some sprites like enemies, leading to far less workload than Chapter 3 had demanded with the real world.

Gameplay

Gameplay wise, this will be where the “mid game” should start ramping up, so difficulty would start spiking here as well compared to base game. Normal mode would still be accessible for most players, but Hard mode would get more aggressive in terms of mechanics, and start to really pose a challenge. Regardless of mode, both would really push for players to learn emotion mechanics properly (I mean seriously, some people still played the entire mod without using emotions at all???).

For a rough overview for what’s coming gameplay wise:

Enemies throw ailments far more often

Some enemies nullify, absorb, or repel specific emotion damage innately

Charge skills and Telegraphed heavy attacks appear more often

Troops tend to appear in larger sizes

Considering feedback received from Chapter 2, it won’t be as tedious as Cattail fields, where enemy encounters tend to be spongy and slow-paced: leading to the next point;

Battles are generally more dynamic, going in a more aggressive direction: enemies are easier to kill, but so are you.

Area conditions that spice up the initial battle a bit

Progress

As of now, Chapter 4 is going relatively fine. There is a temporary knock down in activity from external factors, but we’re still able to keep a steady pace, which is what really matters in the long run. For easy viewing, the progress will be split into sectors:

Writing is going steady, it isn’t as difficult as the real world which has higher stakes, but it still matters to write in character. 

Pixel art side of things is also going well. There is far less work needed in terms of pixel art, due to less of both sprites and maps. Basically, anything now is relatively easier than CH3.

Drawn art also is going fine, the majority of spriteworks are already done. As mentioned before in CH3 dev logs, half of the sprites were done before CH3 even started, so this is not new information.

Music is also similar to Drawn art in progress, the majority of songs having been completed beforehand. Though one major difference is that a decent amount of those assets became “outdated”, so we might need to work on replacing or recomposing. This also happened in the art side, but just not to the same degree.

And finally in RPGMaker work itself, there is also some progress made, though less than others as this would be the final step after all assets are completed. The work here so far is mostly implementing all the assets and organizing files. On top of that, we have also started working on cutscenes as well as enemies.

Final Notes

Overall, progress is going steady, despite earlier difficulties in terms of activity. All sectors are progressing in some form, which is a nice change of pace compared to CH3’s very lopsided work allocation.

Thanks for reading this far, here's a preview of some work done so far!

[omorimodreverie]

REVERIE Applications Open

We hoped you enjoyed Chapter 3 of REVERIE! If you'd like to join us in developing Chapter 4 onwards with us, we'd be more than happy to have you. Applications are always open!

Form Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdik8aVF8My823iBvnbRaEsJAQMO1rRpEsc5Lq9Zr5F27H-oA/viewform

[omorimodreverie]

REVERIE: CHAPTER 3 RELEASE

REVERIE: CHAPTER 3 is live RIGHT NOW!

Thank you for waiting, and please have a fun time playing!

Mod Link: https://mods.one/mod/reverie

Here are some screenshots on the mod page

[omorimodreverie]

OMORI: REVERIE - CHAPTER 3 TRAILER

After a long wait... It's almost here!

Trailer link: https://youtu.be/Sbr3rnr3lSM

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Dev Log - 2024 January + February

Overview

January and February saw ups and downs in activity, but overall significant progress was made. The start of the year was initially slow due to breaks, but activity picked up slowly. You may have noticed that there were less promotional posts or updates in general during this time, as we were focused on development. Thanks to these efforts, though, we’re fairly optimistic that this will be the final dev log for Chapter 3.

As for me (Stahl) personally, I have not been able to do much this time round as I have been busy (hence lack of public updates), but this time round invaluable progress was made by others in the team.

Quick rundown:

First round of playtesting has been done - This was a very rudimentary one aimed at finding basic bugs

NPCs are now mostly finished, and our writers are now working on flavor text and side writings

Portraits are all done and implemented

Battles have been planned out in more detail

Various organizational changes

Extra writers and RPGMV members have been recruited

Updates

The first round of playtesting is complete! This one was rather rudimentary, containing only basic story points. The aim was to test progression and to fix major bugs, both of which we’ve now finished. There are still some major aspects missing, like flavor texts and quests but vital components to main progression like cutscenes and maps are completed and being tested. Hopefully, this round of playtesting should wrap up soon, and more will follow. 

Minor and Side contents

There’s still a lot of design decisions to make, mostly regarding seemingly minor aspects of the game that actually take large amounts of resources. A lot of thought must be put into whether these features, like flavor text and shops, are worth the amount of time needed to make them, and if so how much. 

Due to this chapter being a real world section and story centric, the remaining gameplay would be left to mostly side quests. This is an interesting challenge, as unlike base Omori, Sunny is not familiar with the city like back in Faraway town, meaning it’s more challenging to find opportunities to give him quests. 

As for Reverie specific side content, battles won’t completely be abandoned in the real world. They’ll be taking forms in various challenge battles found throughout the city. For a rough idea, think of the Jackson poster found in Hobbeez from the base game.

Miscellaneous Changes

Another thing yet to be done are tweaks to previous chapter content. They will mostly affect quality of life, but some will also be major gameplay changes. Here’s some examples of planned changes (not exhaustive):

Picnic allows the player to change difficulty mid game (Trust me, later dream world chapters will feature major difficulty spikes and players may get stuck)

Hit Rates on equipment changed, mostly heavily nerfed. This makes evasion buffs actually relevant (and also, 300% hit rate is just silly).

Some skills entirely changed (e.g. Spaceboy Preserve will change into another Attack skill instead).

In game info to indicate that emotion influences Enemy AI very strongly in reverie compared to base game.

Conclusion

Overall, development on chapter 3 is reaching its later stages, reaching the first round of playtesting. This should hopefully be the last dev log in relation to Chapter 3 development.

As thanks for reading this far, here is a remade portrait of real world Sunny! It’s a bit more softer than the previous one, and the proportion has been improved as well.

[omorimodreverie]

Reverie Dev Log - November and December

Side Note: This one is quite long, if you only want an important part, there is a TL;DR summary at the bottom.

New Year Note

Happy New Year! We have now reached 2024! Reverie has begun as a little project since April 2021, before it even has its name. The more modern variant began after the demo release in August 2021, with CH1 releasing in May 2022, so it’s been a long way.

Though to admit, considering CH2.5 update came in December 2022, this means CH3 has a gap of a year now (though there are some updates and patches on 2.5 for a few months. This makes it seem like progress has been in stagnation, especially with delayed dev log recently.

This one will be shorter in technical and progress details, and more about the general gist of development plans in general, the surrounding environmental change in modding and OMORI as a whole (as that bears a great effect currently), and finally explains the slow down a bit (though a TL;DR: basically the past few months is holidays).

Also, Development post will now rather be every 2 months as well.

(And also the time is better spent on actually development than just writing, lol)

Overview

November and December for its period of time wasn’t as much done compared to previous months, though it wasn’t as bad as the worst case scenario when factoring in multiple holidays coming in that could have easily killed the motivation entirely. So all things considered, it’s relatively steady going despite the circumstances

For a quick rundown:

More NPCs implemented in maps

Writing is a bit more organized and more steady in terms of work now (And also an additional writer member!)

Portraits started to be done for most main characters

Connected up some progression from separate disjointed cutscenes

Some new plans that reduces workload*

Some enemy sprites are done as well on the side**

A few changes and re-polish on some music tracks

*for example, sunset are done on same map with filter than whole new set of maps

**Which are low priority, more of optional content in CH3 context

Updates, Changes and Needs

There are multiple factors that affect development, here it will be listed from short term factor to long term factor and potential future.

Holiday and Breaks

Let’s start with easy stuff, the short term factor. The past few months contain multiple holidays and also school breaks for some people. There isn’t much to say here, people on holidays get busy therefore less people are doing mod work, especially Christmas and New Year holiday.

(I mean, reverie is a fan mod project, not a job, lol)

Though there is still at least some minimum baseline of trying to keep interest up with some check in, so the interest doesn’t die off entirely, as mentioned in previous Dev Log before large holidays tend to be in big risk for that.

CH3 and Real World Content

One major thing to think about is the length of the real world section and the amount of content it has. The real world content has a large upfront cost due to making an entire new asset for the majority of aspects, so any new things added more will take far longer time than usual other chapters in the dream world.

There are two major aspects to consider, the mandatory story aspect, and the optional side content aspect. 

Mandatory / Story Content

As of current the main story aspect of CH3 is quite short, unlike Dreamworld areas, the Real world main content mostly revolves around cutscenes and dialogues, if you speed through the dialogue and cutscenes, it could very well take only half an hour or less to go through (though that’s unlikely the way it’s played on first playthrough at least, ignoring reading time).

One conflict is that, Reverie as a mod is far more focused on Dreamworld sections and battle heavy, making real world sections a bit awkward to make, taking quite a large amount of development time compared to other dream world chapters. The question then is how much real world content should be made, factoring in development time?

Side / Optional Content

As for side content, like in base game it’s mostly NPCs giving fetch quests (which are simpler to make), or potentially jobs (which is a bit more complex).

One unique aspect of Reverie over the base game though, is some amount of gameplay battles to at least give something to do (think of Jackson poster in Hobbeez in base game, but more fleshed out).

The important question is, how much side content should there be in the real world section of reverie? While it is cool to have some side content in real world and is a common complaint on base game itself that the real world feels lackluster, making more things in real world also takes up a large amount of development time which is not ideal. It’s a balancing act between not too lackluster but also not too much content which would take too much time.

RPGMV Needs and Modding Community

And finally, the general community aspect. The OMORI fandom has aged quite a while now, and as time passes the amount of people interested is reduced as well. This project is ultimately a fan project so the amount of interest on the mod isn’t really a problem, but what does this mean is there are less people interested in OMORI and also modding in general,.

A fair amount of people who tend to do RPGMaker MV (RPGMV) works tend to now be out no longer modding, or new members who do would tend to be making own project anyways. This means there has been less people who are available with RPGMV side, which means aspects like cutscenes should be cut down smaller to avoid development hell.

What this means for development is the gears shift from previous usual development focused on efficiency (getting task as parallel as possible), to a slower but sustainable development, focusing more on sustaining interest, which is better than losing interest totally.

TL;DR

Basically, the key important points are:

Short term aspect of Holidays and New Year makes November and December slow period in general.

Real World content (and CH3 by extension) is more time consuming and harder to make than other chapters

Therefore, amount of Real World content needs to be discussed, both mandatory and optional content

There has been less people in Omori community in general meaning there is less people to go by, especially RPGMV sector

Therefore, development has switched to a more slow burn state, taking things slow but sustaining interest to avoid burn out or lost motivation

And for development posts, now will be posting every 2 months than every months instead to reduce writing.

And about Applications...

Applications are always open! RPGMV / Programmers are always appreciated!

Final Stuff

Well now that you read this far, here's some portrait of Daphne and Bowen! (and also probably the only few sprite that is showable related to CH3 now)

There isn't much detail, but when resized down it is enough as a sprite

[omorimodreverie]

September & October Development Update

Writer: ReynStahl

Overview

A fair few milestones were achieved during the past few months. The pixel art and map sectors are starting to near its completion, at which point the bottleneck now shifts towards the writing sector instead (such as NPCs and Flavor text), and the RPGMaker sector. Some small tasks regarding art still remain, such as portraits, but the fact that much higher priority tasks take precedence as well as the low number of art related tasks itself puts it on the back burner for now. 

Going into a more personal aspect, I have not contributed much to the team due to being busy with the real life aspect, though hopefully November should be different. However, our awesome team members were still able to make a good amount of progress, especially with maps (which are really good).

Progress

Music organization and implementation

Even though most songs needed for chapter 3 have already been finished prior, it’s only just been implemented properly. There are also some extra music tasks that have come up along the way as well, but overall this sector is pretty close to completion.

Maps

Majority of maps are now functional within the RPGMV engine to continue making events and other things. Most are just about at the polish stage.

Flavor Texts

Only a map or two have their flavor texts fleshed out. However, it should be noted that most of our writing is dedicated towards NPC dialogue at the moment. The current flavor texts are more done on passing when testing maps.

NPCs

RPGMaker wise, 2 maps are completely done now in terms of NPCs. NPC dialogue for other maps are also in progress.

Writing wise, there is still quite a lot to go through.

Overhaul sheet organizer

This is a more developmental aspect, where all the tasks are now concentrated into a central sheet so it’s easier to manage and communicate, and so tasks don’t become lost as well.

Organization of files and compiling older assets

As mentioned above, organization is needed as some older works are being left forgotten for a while. For example, an asset might be finished early but require other tasks to be completed as well before implementation.

What’s Next?

As mentioned before, the bottleneck now starts to shift into the writing and RPGMaker aspects. 

Writing NPCs or flavor text might seem like a small minor aspect, but surprisingly, it can be quite a large task, especially for newer areas where it has to be made from the ground up. There is also an aspect of organization involved here, as we’re dealing with quite a large amount of text in different areas or NPCs, and have to keep track of what belongs where. It can be quite tedious as the process might feel disjointed and also due to the sheer quantity of text required, relative to main cutscenes.

As for RPGMaker, the main two tasks would be the actual implementation of events, such as populating the maps with flavor or NPCs, and organization of said events so the individual elements actually connect together (which is another whole type of task in itself).

Here’s a flowchart of the current progress below:

Any Teasers?

Anyways, thanks for reading this far and being patient! Here’s a teaser for the apartment map and its area theme!

[omorimodreverie]

August Development Update

Overview

August started out similarly to the last couple months, with progress being on the slow side and contributions being made in base asset development. However, progress began ramping up towards the end of the month, and we’re now at a place where we’re making some decent progress towards a test build. We’re only just beginning, of course; and it’ll still take a lot of time before anything is ready for the playtesters. But still, progress is progress.

This month is an important milestone in that we finally started to implement the assets we have into the RPGMV engine. At this point in time, we now have the beginnings of a playable city in the works, and we hope to refine it into a state where we can give you some sneak peeks sometime soon. All I can say for now is that I’m personally very excited with how the city looks, even now at this primitive stage: I can’t wait for you all to see it.

Progress

As mentioned previously, the most noteworthy progress made in August was that our base assets are being implemented into RPGmaker. However, this in no way means that other areas of development weren’t touched upon: in fact, quite the opposite. Everything we’ve worked on during the past month includes, but is not limited to:

With a few exceptions, maps for the city that will be shown in chapter 3 has been implemented into RPGmaker

Basic map events have been put in place that allow map movement, door accessibility, functioning stairs and elevators, etc

A number of cutscenes, as well as NPCs, have been mostly implemented into the game and fleshed out

A number of additional pixel artwork for NPCs and map objects were completed and added into spritesheets

Organization for various songs and the music department in general has seen significant progress

Progress was made on the writing for cutscenes and various flavor text/NPC dialogue

The game files in general were reorganized, as well as optimized

What’s In Plan For The City

Going into development for chapter 3, a very important and rather difficult challenge was posed to us in the form of the chapter’s playable area, the real world city. Of the two areas we worked on so far, Fallen World was based off of a preexisting area in the base game, and therefore much easier to develop; and the Neural Network, while original, was still a part of dreamworld, allowing us to conceptualize much of it based on our major interpretations of headspace.

The city is different in that this is a place entirely separate from Sunny’s imagination or even Faraway Town. This means that we have virtually nothing from the base game to draw inspiration from, and have to build it from the ground up almost completely by ourselves. This is partially the reason why chapter 3 is taking so long to complete: from a development perspective, we’re having to blaze our own trails. For a team of voluntary, part-time, amateurs, this has proven to be somewhat of a hurdle.

Our main goal with the city was to make an area that felt ‘dynamic’: basically, for it to feel like a real city. Faraway Town in base OMORI is a tiny suburban community: to that end, the buildings are sparse and short, with identical houses lining the streets. Combined with a general lack of large-scale activity and mostly static NPCs, it gives off an atmosphere of relative sleepiness, an aura of quiet. We wanted our city to provide a sharp contrast to Faraway in this aspect: we wanted it to be rambunctious, packed, and bustling.

Creating a ‘Dynamic’ City

So what makes a city ‘dynamic’? During the course of the last few months, we’ve been able to come up with a map of the city that’s filled with tall buildings tightly nestled together, in the backdrop of a tightly urbanized network of uniformly gray streets and sidewalks. All this combines to create an impression of crowdedness: however, it still falls short of being ‘dynamic’. That’s because the map itself is one half of a whole, the other half being the map’s inhabitants, NPCs.

Even with the most packed and busy city of all time, it doesn’t exhibit any life until actual people are living in it. And this is our real challenge surrounding the creation of this city: to populate the map we have with NPCs that can successfully convey the impression of bustling, busy and lively city people. There’s a few methods we can use to achieve this, such as:

Power in numbers: simply have many, many NPCs in the city

Passage of time: as the time of day changes, have NPCs move from place to place, with different NPCs being present at different times and etc

Literal movement: have NPCs literally move around, such as walking through the streets, wander through a shop, etc

While all three methods are important, and they’ll all be used for the creation of chapter 3, the third and last method of allowing NPCs to literally move around is arguably the most important. This is because NPCs moving around with the player are the most visually distinct: a room where everyone but the player stands around doing nothing is static as soon as the player stops moving, but a room where an NPC goes around doing something always has something going on, looking much more lively.

Take a look at this shot of the cafe, for instance. The player is mostly standing still, but two NPCs (the brunette waitress and the blonde waiter) are constantly in action: cleaning tables, washing dishes, entering and exiting doors, etc. This, combined with the map of the cafe itself and the patron NPCs sitting on the chairs, is what creates a ‘dynamic’ atmosphere.

While we’re just getting started with the NPCs, we want to eventually finish the entire map out that radiates the feeling of being ‘dynamic’, as described above. We’ll be putting up periodic updates on how we’re doing on that front with the dev updates in the future, so please stay tuned.

End of Summer Break?

It’s September now, and everyone’s summer breaks have mostly come to a close. For our team, this year’s summer break period was characterized by a time of generally slow progress. Now that it’s over, things have indeed started to speed up: while early August still had little activity, things gradually picked up as the month progressed. The last week of the month marked the zenith of this growth, with considerable progress being made in all sectors.

Still, it would be rather naive to think that this fast progress will continue on for the rest of the semester. Midterms are still very much a thing, and right now is just a short period between summer break and exam period. Still, we want to use the opportunity we have right now as efficiently as possible.

September looks to be a promising month in terms of progress. We won’t take that for granted, though. We’ll see you next month, with hopefully lots of news. Thanks for reading this far, and thanks as always for your interest in Reverie!

[omorimodreverie]

An unfinished old intro cutscene before 2.5 update changes. Used to be planned for CH2 initial release.

[omorimodreverie]

An unused enemy sprite made a long while ago.

Made around at similar time as Widowboy and based loosely on Sickboy, both being Omocat's OCs.

[omorimodreverie]

July Development Update

Hello everyone, I’m nru. I’m the co-lead of Reverie along with Stahl. Since Stahl is a little busy this month, I’ll be posting this month’s development update.

Overview

Summer break is in full force, and many of our members are in the middle of much-deserved vacations. Even so, we’re making slow but steady progress.

This month was a time where we focused on finishing up our base assets, such as pixel art, tilesets, cutscene scripts, etc. We’re finally approaching the moment where we can start implementing all these assets into RPGMV. Of course, even after that moment comes we’ll still have a lot of work to do: still, we’ll be entering a new phase of development which is always exciting.

Finishing touches were done on many aspects of base asset development, especially the tilesets/map design for the new areas in chapter 3. Minor progress was also made on scripts, pixel art, and other miscellaneous drawn assets. 

Progress

Like June, no major milestones in development were reached this month. However, we’re steadily working towards them, and it seems like we’re soon going to reach said milestones. Our main points of progress are:

Finished development of tilesets/map design for many locations/areas in the new map for chapter 3

All but one major cutscenes that will take place in chapter 3 have finished primary drafting and editing

Various pixel artwork has been made, such as NPCs and city objects, that will make chapter 3’s world feel more lively than ever before

A bit more enemy sprites for battles that will take place in future chapters have been finished

Discussed and finalized details regarding Reverie’s ending

Plans for August

August still falls within the realm of Summer Break. As such, we don’t expect any fundamental changes to the way things are right now (many members on break, etc). One thing to note, though, is that the time has come for our finished base assets to be implemented into RPGMV itself. That means, by September we might have a primitive (but still functional) playtest. 

I’ll be honest and say that the past two months have been rather disappointing in terms of progress. But that’s to be expected given that it’s Summer Break, and on the whole things have been progressing as planned. We’re slow, not dead. We’ll come back with chapter 3 before long.

Closing

We want to thank you all for being so patient with us and waiting this long for the chapter 3 release. As a small thanks, we’d like to give you all a sneak preview of the stuff we’ve got in store for chapter 3, stuff we’ve been careful to keep under wraps so far. We hope this manages to pique your interest a little bit for the coming chapter. See you next month!

[omorimodreverie]

One more day…

[omorimodreverie]

June Development Update

Overview

This month was a mixture of up and down in terms of activity. One notable thing about this period is that most of our team members have now finished with their finals, and have properly begun summer vacation. However, this does not necessarily mean that development speed increases!

There were major and minor bits of work done across most of our sectors this time, with the main being a slight reorganization of writing; some basic tileset work (our tilesets are beginning to be finalized!), and starting on polishing our map files.

What’s been done?

This month didn’t see any significant leaps in progress, but miscellaneous portions of work that are nevertheless vital have been completed across multiple sectors:

Inducted a new writing lead to the leads team

Finished primary dialogue work on around half of the cutscenes planned for chapter 3. Progress has also been made on the other half

Pixel Art is progressing slowly but consistently, with new additions/changes to our spritesheets every few days

Non-CH3 drawn art assets have also been worked on, mostly enemy sprites and concepts (We can’t wait to show them to you in the future, they’re very exciting!)

Discussion and slight reorganization around skill progression for future chapters, as well as on boss design. Rest assured, we are still putting gameplay first and foremost.

Summer Break, Right?

This month is when summer break properly starts for a good amount of people. Some start a bit earlier in May, and some in June; But by mid-June almost everyone is on summer break.

It might be tempting to think that progress will become much faster now that break is here, but to think so is a bit naive: as some people will also be taking their own time for, well, a break. [Like myself, Stahl. I’m typing this very dev log during vacation right now, that’s why it’s a bit late. Oops.]

Progress is projected to be more or less consistent with the speed of development so far, balanced by some being able to work more while some becoming unavailable for break.

Ending Notes

You may have noticed that this month’s dev log wasn’t as long as the last one in May. This is because the last one was our first ever dev log, so we had more stuff to talk about: including all developments made previous to May as well. Please expect posts of a similar length to this one going forwards.

We’d love to showcase some teaser for chapter 3 at this point, but since our progress this month has consisted mostly of writing and tilesets (which is difficult to showcase nicely), we don’t really have much to show off as usual.

Anyways, here’s an old Ice Angel enemy sprite made around April last year. This one’s unused now, and only has 2 (out of 3 and bunch more emotion variants) frames made, so this is not our final product (or appearing anytime soon lol).