Sukeban Games

Developer Diaries from the Sukeban Staff (mainly just kiri)

Author: kiririn51

  • August 11

    Not a whole lot due to some personal thingies but still did the layout and set up for another scene and cleaned up the title screen. Newprogrammer had a couple buttons for New Game and Load Game in the most “programmer art” fashion you can think, so I drew a quick sketch and made the buttons consistent with the rest of the game.

    The game’s logo goes in the middle, but since it’s not final and contains an also not-final title for the project I won’t show it until a formal reveal.

    During the set up of the level I did encounter an unexpected problem.

    It looks as if the model gets off-center over time, which is weird since it doesn’t occur with Reila’s model. We’ll have to check this out once the dialogue gets implemented in this scene.

    Not sure if I’ll be able to make more levels tomorrow but we’ll see. I may have to redo the character menu since we are scrapping a bunch of features since there’s like, zero fuckin’ desire to do game balance. So a simplified gameplay is in order. Core stays the same, but we’ll proooobably not go with a skill tree. Perhaps a more DMC-esque upgrade shop?

    Again, we’ll see!

  • August 10

    Another two maps blocked out, and newprogrammer implemented some more dialogue. This time with cutscenes in between loading so that’s one less worry about the game’s flow. Things are really super fucking comfy right now and I couldn’t be happier. We’ll keep building this chapter and fix whatever comes up and I’ll keep polishing the visuals as we go.

    Tomorrow more of the same. Newprogrammer I think has to build a tool for creating NPCs but I don’t remember if that’s already done.

    Good shit!

  • august 9

    Newprogrammer has been implementing dialogue while I make levels. Today I blocked out 2, complete with camera set ups and all. Tomorrow I will probably do the same if I don’t feel like writing. Pretty chill yet productive day. Tons of fun playing around with cinemachine.

    Gonna be cool once players see a finished version of this.

  • august 6

    We began working on Project D chapter 4, stuff’s going surprisingly well. Newprogrammer listed an amusing 27 things to add but it’s all very needed stuff we’ll use a lot across every chapter. Chief among them is a way to trigger cutscenes when going from one place to another. That shit happens a lot!

    Felt nice to be back to making cutscenes, too. I also did some environment work. Gonna be an interesting next week for sure.

  • august 5

    More work on the big map. Getting closer on getting that “finished” version and it’s pretty fun to explore. Gonna take a while to polish but the important bits are almost done. Tomorrow I’ll likely continue that or start building chapter 4 if newprogrammer fixed some stuff that came up today.

  • august 4

    I wanted to write today but I remembered I also had a huge-ass map to “finish” – longtime readers know that “finish” means the whole enchilada with the layout, look and feel but still extremely rough, still easy to change as needed. So I’ll focus on that for the next couple days. That thing has been the bane of my existence so it’s gonna feel good once I have it working.

  • August 3

    Wrote another n1rvanna customer and that’s pretty much it. I’m using a really cool software that lets me know the runtime of any given scene and I’ve been writing 15 to 20 minutes worth of content everyday. I’m not trying to fill a quota, but it’s a good way to measure the amount of work done. Very important if I wanna keep myself motivated.

    Newprogrammer fixed a series of bugs related to the save system.

    Tomorrow I will either continue with another patron or finish Project D’s fifth chapter, for which I have a healthy amount of notes to fix the dumb thing I mentioned yesterday.

  • July 26 to August 2

    Today was a day of writing. I’m a bit stuck in some places as it seems like I wrote myself into a corner over something really stupid, so I’m considering changing a couple things. Time will tell if they are big things.

    Last week I spent a couple days just working on environments and level layouts, the the rest was spent doing a second draft for chapter 4 of Project D and writing what’s left of chapter 5. I finished chapter 4’s second draft in roughly two days and it came out pretty good. We’ll start putting that one together this week inside the game providing newprogrammer feels better health-wise.

    With that second revision and chapter 5 well on its way towards completion, I feel like Project D is about to complete a big milestone. We set out to do six chapters and so far we have 1, 3, 4 and soon 5. It’s possible we cram an extra one in there but it depends on the resources and writing needs. It could also all get compressed into a single stand alone story if it’s too big to make in what’s left of our self-imposed deadline. Gonna be interesting to see what actually makes it, but I’m fine if a lot ends up not being used since the experience is very much priceless and ideas are never truly lost.

    This week the most important tasks are:

    • Finishing chapter 5
    • Start putting together chapter 4 inside the engine
    • Write more n1rvanna customers (literally finished one today so it’s looking good)

    At one point I’ll have to start scheduling a bunch of these and go all gas no brakes, but until then I’ll keep working like I’ve been doing so far. Just taking my time to get a feel for every task, get stuff done one by one, etc.

    Sometimes it feels as if no progress is being made but that’s natural even when I’m busting my ass on these projects. Just gotta hang in there some more before it can get speedy again.

  • july 14 to 20

    • Sequencing tool in project D is approaching mimum viable product. Would be ready if it wasn’t because we forgot to add an extra feature but after a call we came to a really comfy solution that I hope to see working this week.
    • Did more debugging of tools. They are surprisingly robust so far! I’m really happy with how things are going
    • Need a tool to automatically set up NPC’s
    • More progress on writing, N1rvanna getting closer by the day. Need an extra hand here but I’ll search once I’m happy with the whole enchilada.
    • hit the books to learn best practices when making 3d games (underrated thing a lotta amateurs should do)
    • Work on merch is aaaaalmost done except for one last item that requires writing. Shop design getting there too. Gonna be really cool :o)

    There’s probably a lot more I don’t remember, which is why i shouldn’t do this weekly lol.

  • july 13

    Been writing scenes in little 3 by 5 cards and N1rvanna is becoming this beautiful thing that gets me very excited. The game is all about little moments and I’m glad I can get a solid preview of these on paper without strictly seeing it play out as a video game yet. Once I come up with a story I’m truly 100% happy with I’ll begin to transfer all of this to digital and into the game engine. I want the drink mixing to carry a ridiculous weight so it’s gonna be a huge challenge to get that right as well. Very excited though, despite the long road ahead.

    I have to mention that I still have no idea what I’m doing and the writing of this game could completely suck so don’t get excited. However, I have faith in my own taste and if I like it then surely it will resonate with others bigly.

    edit: It looks as if the writing is in a super early stage, but reality is that there’s a lot done, just full of things I don’t 100% vibe with and I don’t work on shit unless I 100% vibe with it at the time.

    Newprogrammer is knee deep writing documentation so I can use the sequencing tools properly without bugging him every three seconds. So while he does that I’ll focus some more on writing.