Spent yesterday doodling some more characters. I drew Ganimard mostly for a meme, but it doesn’t hurt to have a design for him around in case I want him to play a bigger role later (or I could draw more memes).
Either way, drawing him got me to finally pull together my idea for Detective Cordelia Lepp. She’s the police investigator assigned to the case of the painite gem’s theft. She really wants it over with so she can finally take a nap. She was born deaf and has a cochlear implant.
Also, have a WIP for a scene in the game (still needs lots of work sdfghggfds).
Saw a post on tumblr and went “Hey my blorbos would say that” and decided to make a goofy dialogue test with it.
I probably shouldn’t have made a custom text box because I need all the free common events I can get, but...like...pretty.
It’s pretty much set up and done, unless I decide to add a text log to the game. I’m debating if it’ll be necessary because there’s already an encyclopedia menu that does effectively the same thing, but summarized. Seems like extra work for no reason, yeah? We’ll see.
Created the game’s title! I made the font for The Copycat Burglar part, it’s based on the one used on the 1907 cover of Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur (Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar) with some added wear and substitutes for the letters I didn’t have.
Finished the last background image for the menus! (Content Warning Mode text subject to change).
Really wish I could have figured out how to put a space between commands, but with the way this engine works it’s difficult for me to just change some numbers for that. Sometimes you just have to work with what you’ve got, but I’ll live with it.
I need the button images for the tutorial graphics as well, so two birds with one stone by making this image.
In the game you can present clues to people or compare them to other things you can investigate in a scene. You can select which clue with this popup menu.
You can equip tools too. There are a few prompts, depending on if you have one already equipped.
Did a little work to make it that when you have a tool equipped, it will tell you in the menu description too. Outside of the menu, the cursor changes to indicate what tool you have equipped. :)
I decided no drawing til my hand is completely better. I did do some color drafting though (cause I could do it left handed).
Encyclopedia menu. Summarizes the game in small sections as you get to certain story points, for those who put down the game and need a refresher when they come back. Keeps track of characters too, and updates their entries with more info as you learn more about them.
Changed the System (Save/Load/Delete) menu. The Help window got lost as I changed the Inventory menu, but it wasn’t really necessary for this screen anyway.
Inventory menu. You can present Clues to people, equip Tools, and Memories are a collectible you can find in the game while investigating.
Memories aren’t super important, they spark non-plot relevant conversations between Sherlock and Arsène.
Hoping that next week my hand will be good enough to finish at least half the big thing I was working on. 🤞🤞
My wrist still hurts and I didn’t get a lot of drawing done this week, so here’s a snippet of some (optional, not plot relevant) dialogue I wrote instead.
This week I did a little bit of background drafting. I was unsure what kind of angle to do the rooms from.
I ended up discussing with a friend about it, and came to the conclusion that thematically, based on how I interpret Sherlock Holmes as a character, it's better to see as much of a room as possible (isometric isn't the right word for it but I'm too lazy to change my note lol).
I have a sort of...headcannon? (It's based on the ACD novels, so I suppose it is) that Sherlock has a hard time enjoying mystery fiction, both movies and books, based on how he dislikes John's romantic writing of A Study in Scarlett.
Movies in particular are curated to drop the fluff of real life when cutting from one shot to the next. He's a man of details; he wants to see as much of the room as possible, getting deep in corners is exactly his style.
So rather then a more interesting angle for the sake of artistry, I'm going with as much of the room I can fit on one screen. So the player can get into every corner too.
Sherlock would probably love a good escape room though, lol.
Did some small changes to Main Menu graphic. Changed some lines and colors. I have this thing about straight lines in my art, most of the time I think they look too awkward (with only a few exceptions to my weird little rule, like those rays of light).
I also changed the mouse control graphic (though that was already in last week’s post). It’s always present on screen, so I made it a starker color against all the yellow in the UI.
Here’s another Menu graphic that I finished quickly.
The game’s aesthetics take a lot from art nouveau and futurism. Lots of naturalist curves, though more cubist when converging lines meet into points. I hope that comes through lol.
If you’d like to follow the game’s development more closely, I’m going to tag the posts as #SHandAL. Hope you look forward to more!
I'm so used to accidentally breaking RPG Maker that I put my hands down and went "The save slots shall remain ugly". Turns out it just needed a refresh from a new game, so I went back and changed the whole thing nhbgfyghuijk
No proper graphics yet, but I think the save scene is looking nice so far.
That red block will be the game's title as an image, because I wasn't satisfied with having the engine draw out the text lol.
I currently don’t want to show any visuals I worked on, because what I’ve been working on is a part of a bigger whole that’s getting closer and closer to done, so I may as well wait.
I did, however, figure out something interesting.
I’m currently using a plugin that allows the player to select images on a map with the mouse. The way this plugin works, is that you have to attach RPG Maker MV’s Common Events to the image. I had been worried about this, because without lots of messing around, the common events are limited to 1000. I’m also using them for a lot of the visuals, so I feared that I might run out quickly (I’ve only just started and I’ve already used 45 so far).
While I was thinking about how to allow players to transfer between rooms, I realized I could use switches inside of a common event. While this still takes up a few common events, I can use the same 4 common events/switches over and over again in every room to activate auto-events located on the map. It’s a small way to keep me from getting all the way to 1000.
This idea opens up a lot of doors (haha), actually. There are probably other recurring event types I could use this for.