shalmonsgamedev

[shalmonsgamedev]

Custom "wizard" font has more or less been made again, no fancy conlang logic to it, but fun to do so many shapes to be had in so little space! Now to figure out if I can switch between fonts as needed;;

[shalmonsgamedev]

I experimented with adding a larger-sprited adult character 96x96 for now, compared to the kids' 48x48 the size difference is very funny but tbh I am probably keeping it it's a silly game after all

My main hesitation is it does mean that the scale of the environment is kinda wack for adults or at least for the scale of henri's room tryin to decide if it'll work for the comedic effect or is just impractical lol

[shalmonsgamedev]

Finally adding a page to the ol' dev sketchbook just some rando wizard concepts, none of these are final and unsure if canon I just know that there's lots of 'em a wizard for every Thing (as usual, based on randomly selected pokemon, some more obvious than others)

[shalmonsgamedev]

Finally imported the Keeper sprite into RMMZ now the player sprite properly transforms into it when using the card! as for the sprite, it's currently a 16x16 blown up to the MZ standard 48x48 haven't yet decided if I want to bother messing with the display size; may just leave it for the demo

Though I would still like to make some kind of EggB overlay

[shalmonsgamedev]

There are a few symbols that I probably won't need in the Geney Wizard font, so I'm considering maybe turning those into "emojis"?  Or other pictograms that could serve as additional hints

[shalmonsgamedev]

I've been trying to figure out how to make fonts, since I think it would be best to go ahead and make one for the untranslated "wizard script" of Geney Wizards (otherwise the next best thing would be some kind of "show picture" hackery for each dialog, which sounded extremely tedious) won't be any fancy conlang (I have neither time nor skill lol) & will be something that players can prob figure out if they really want to (I still plan for henri & gladys' banter to guide the player) but I would of course like for it to look gameboy-ish, so pixel font converter is looking promising for that

This implies that I am technically still writing dialog for this section, which was what I thought I was trying to avoid, but I guess in this case I will be making the translated lines extremely simplistic lol

Though there is potential opportunity for fun easter eggs, for anyone who figures out the symbols

[shalmonsgamedev]

Yea;;; srry RPGmaker map editor, Tiled is just too easy to use  I am willing to put up with the collision tedium that parallax backgrounds entail, if it means the map-making itself isn't going to be a headache lol here's a peek at how the opening Geney Wizards map is lookin

[shalmonsgamedev]

Due to laziness?, I am considering making the Geney Wizard maps parallax as well importing your own tilesets to RPGm is a bit more annoying than I realized so I may just import them into the much more intuitive Tiled program & make the maps there

(since they'll be parallax anyway, maybe I'll add extra flavor in post?)

[shalmonsgamedev]

Menu is turning into another blocker for me ironically because of how simple it would need to be it's weirdly hard to strip RPGmaker menus down to bare-bones stuff seems to require plug-ins and/or other chicanery but yea for wizkens the main functional needs would be options & items? anything else would be flavor ("friends list" that catalogs info on different NPCs might be cute?) but I at least have a gimmick in mind now (I'd like it to literally be an EggB display--since so little is needed, I think the small screen area would suffice lol)

[shalmonsgamedev]

I have finally redone/finished(?) the map of Henri's room there are now a couple more spaces to walk lol some of the textures were technically placeholder, but since I am allowed to use them anyway I may just leave it nobody has to know 😶

[shalmonsgamedev]

I did hit a pretty big music obstacle that has hopefully been cleared?? basically I will probably need to learn reaper instead of using LMMS the vst I bought only seems to work on one(1) track in LMMS which is not ideal 🙃 but thankfully my spouse has reaper & I was able to try it in that seems to work as needed, so now I'll just need to learn the workflow

[shalmonsgamedev]

I've actually been making some progress but have hit a weird devlogging wall in which I feel too embarrassed to keep doing so? I think because it's getting less & less likely that I'll meet my december goal for the demo but it's really not a big deal the blog is tiny and no one has put money towards the project (except me lol)

Also, the reality is I prob got way more done this year than I would have, just by setting the goal

[shalmonsgamedev]

Absurd & mildly desperate thought as it occurs to me that 2024 is 3/4 done, and I wanted to "finish" the demo;;; one of my biggest blockers has been writing the dialog for the geney wizards section but what if… this GW card is so special to henri because it's an "import" none of the dialog in its associated level is readable, it hasn't been translated yet so henri & gladys banter their way through figuring it out

Both a writing shortcut and a nostalgic nod to trying to play japanese pokemon silver back in the day lol

Would certainly pose a different set of challenges though the whole gist was you need to unscramble the wizard's name.  With.  readable letters.  But maybe those particular letters are still readable?  With some pictogram hints along the way  

[shalmonsgamedev]

Alas I have discovered that "The Chicken Dance" is not public domain, as I had assumed I had considered riffing on it in various ways for the chicken half of the soundtrack

[shalmonsgamedev]

I have successfully(?) created the item type that will appear pretty regularly in the full game the scannable cards! I figured I would need to make something that teleports the player into a different map & changes their sprite to create the illusion of a different game it was actually extremely simple lol I'm sure I'll run into other hiccups along the way, but I'm glad the base concept was pretty easy to execute

[shalmonsgamedev]

Messing w/changing the main font today first attempt did not work? I know .woff is default, but I thought it still accepted .tff hmm 2nd attempt also not working …. oh the problem was I am sleepy & kept typing .tff instead of .ttf 🙃

[shalmonsgamedev]

Exploring options for custom text boxes I know you can just alter the graphic itself, but for now I tried the hacky "show picture" method which seems to work fine enough, though it does add a few debatably unnecessary steps tho I could make the most of that & give characters personalized boxes 🤔