Lots of work on the story sequences and fixing some quirks of the save system. That’s basically it. A big grind to get this thing done. Next on the list is a cutscene for the end of the boss fight, an extra environment, and a dialogue for the ending. Once we revisit this episode we have to add a couple scenes to give extra oomph to the story, but for now I’ll adjust existing conversations to make things a bit more sensical.

I’ve come to realize that making a story-focused game with like actual combat and shit is a bit like playing lego, where I get to swap pieces and include new ones to improve the story. I might have said something like this before but it’s something I think about any time we build an episode.

Here are some screenies I took while working on the cinematics.

Been avoiding writing stuff here due to my arm but it’s been feeling great for a long while now. I’m less scared of doing things with it.

Lots of work, mostly on the bug hunting department and polishing of the tools we have. Environments, UI design, playtesting. Aside from some hiccups with the save system and some other jank the game has now a solid 40 minutes of gameplay and that’s like… holy shit! The chapter would be finished by now if it weren’t for the aforementioned bugs but that’s a great signal. My goal has always been hour or hour and a half per chapter and it looks like we’ll make it.

I wasn’t exactly worried about the game being short, but rather that it didn’t have a compelling loop with a good rhythm and pacing that encouraged players to take their time and explore the maps at leisure. Well, now I know it does and the story ain’t bad either. All it needs is a good polishing pass once it’s complete and it will be a Video Game.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots to do. But with this chapter up and running the rest feels achievable within an acceptable time frame.

Medium and long-term goals:

>Code behavior for main bosses
>Code behavior for more enemies
>More items
>More weapons
>Models for characters
>More environments
>Polish and kill whatever bugs we see along the way

It’s very much just content creation whatever we have ahead. It’s great! With the story sort of already written, this thing feels very tangible. Just gotta pray for our current workflow to withstand the impacts of full production. Would be a shame if we had to rebuild the game again but at least this time my Plan C is quite good.

I hope it doesn’t come to that, even if it ain’t gonna be that painful.

I think I have to start using years in these titles now.

Made two new small environments. These are very fun to do since I already have a bunch of assets and modules for them. Plus they are not completely explorable – just a static camera is enough for what the players will do in these :0)

Newprogrammer is putting together the chapter using the scripts I did in December. Our current mission is to implement as much as possible by the end of the week. Might have to write a little.

I think I forgot to mention but here’s a game I made during my vacations. It’s short (20-30 minutes) but nice. I’m proud of it. There’s lot to learn about writing but I’m enjoying letting my mind go wild.

The Radio Wave Bureau

Didn’t update since my arm was killing me but I hope it’s fine now. I managed to grind somewhat hard today without issues.

Even then last week was all about planning and heavy playtesting. The weapon craft system is done, the story scripts we gonna implement are done, save and load ui are done. This week we’ll put all of the aforementioned scripts inside the game proper and see how far we get. Also took the chance to make more environments.

The following days will be very important in order to gauge if this is really the process we want in order to make the game. Fingers crossed for that one. If not, well, then we’ll have to rethink the story presentation and that’s gonna be a bit of a binch.

Lots of work with writing, planning and ironing out some of the customization aspects. We are almost there with the latter, as newprogrammer just implemented a better version of skill customization, then tomorrow weapon customization.

I’m a bit scared about my right arm. Hurts to mildly annoying levels and I’m afraid of an injury.

The thing is that I did a lot of hobby projects during my vacation instead of properly resting, now I’m suffering the consequences.

Let’s hope it gets better…

After wasted time troubleshooting Unity stuff we were able to finish the light refactor of some tools and ways to do shit. Had a long call and we settled on a couple new design choices for the game’s flow (nothing big, just solidifying things that were already there).

All in all we got ourselves some lofty goals for the end of the month on top of what we coordinated last week. This week the main objective is to overhaul the skill assign menu, polish weapon crafting, and some new environments for players to chill at during down time.

I was born for that last item. Let’s fucking go.

Couldn’t work much yesterday due to more Unity fuckery but today we crossed a few more bullet points, and are now closer to finishing the particle and sound stuff we botched last year. Been also doing a bit more planning for the next episode and it’s going well. I’m quite hyped to find our groove when it comes to the story as the internal deadline approaches.

I’m incredibly fired up about this.

After a much deserved vacation we’re back. Didn’t do a whole lot since we’re just coming back, had some meetings, Unity wasn’t feeling like connecting to the cloud. It just wasn’t meant to be, you know? But at least we traced the plan for the whole year and the next month.

Our short term goals are:

• Polish the scenarios in the current chapter (story not necessary to implement)
• Refactor the way attacks are displayed, going from timed VFX to animation events (a remnant of last year’s rush)
• Upload stable build to either itch.io or steam for external playtesting

The first item is the esoteric one that I don’t exactly know how long it’s going to take, so all of these are goals for the end of January.

Next would be to finish the rest of the chapters, complete with game scenarios, enemies and bosses. One a month, maybe more if we speed up the process thanks to experience/improved tools.

Unity finally opened again so I’m gonna work on some thingies before sleeping.

2022… I hope this is the one.

Alright, a somewhat stable game has been achieved. We reached all goals, so that’s pretty good.

Won’t write here until january. Current mission: enjoy the holidays.

See you all!

Partial gamepad support is in place. Battles can be completed with it but I’m yet to test during exploration and dialogue. Boss is…. also complete! Only one more thing came up today that needs to be added, plus tweaks we’ll make over time, but for the time being we can consider it done. Tomorrow we’ll work some more on that gamepad support, then towards a stable battle-only build so my friends can give some feedback.

Stuff’s looking good.