I’m freaking groovin’ to this set as I write.

It’s a great day here in Buenos Aires.

Comfy temps, sunny skies and hot chocolate got me in a super whitepilled mood. So what better moment to write another developer diary?

I thought this month wouldn’t be as productive as the last one, considering I took a week off so I could go to Amsterdam for a Tyler, The Creator concert. But here we are, in the middle of fine-tuning chapter 5 and testing a new sort of design for this part of the game that I hope people will appreciate.

It certainly wasn’t on purpose that every chapter ended up being their own thing. We were hoping that by having a predictable loop development would go faster, and to a degree it did, but the way the tools are designed allowed us to play around with all sorts of scenarios without adding new features outside of small things, such as “enable game object at conversation end”. I’m frankly super happy, and I expect players to appreciate what the planned seven chapters have to offer.

Our current plan for June is to finish what we can of chapter 5, then play the game from the very beginning over and over; cut-scenes and all. This is to get an idea for the game’s “progression balance” (skill, upgrades and weapon availability; Stat numbers, money, etc.) before we jump into the final two acts, which will exploit every single mechanic we’ve added so far. All for the sake of that very specific vibe only video games can achieve: The climax where all elements come into their own.

Thinking about it, that’s really what makes the medium so special. The fact that so many disparate elements can elevate each other in ways only possible when you’re holding a controller and moving the character yourself.

I don’t think there’s much else to say. Things are going well and comically fast. The programmer told me the other day that it was a little scary that we’re so close to hitting a proper beta build during the northern hemisphere summer, which makes me wonder… When should this game release? GTA VI is definitely gonna murder conversation for months next year, and I don’t want this game to be forgotten or be treated as some “overlooked gem”, so it’s been tricky to decide.

We’ll definitely know as time goes on. There’s a chance we get ahead of our internal schedule and surprise everyone, but life (and game development) can be unpredictable, so still no promises.

Regardless of the possible wait between “release candidate” and the game’s actual release, we’ll definitely polish as much as we can in the meantime. As well as jump right away into our next “flagship” commercial video game.

That one is coming, trust me.

Did animation work on a new character (surprisingly comfy) then drew some concepts I’ll have to also model later on. Rest of the day I spent it on stuff for uhh, videogame.

Yeah, videogame.

I think this week for me will be about playtesting and making assets. Ever since I got a hang of the paint texture thing in blender I’ve been on a roll, and now it’s something I look forward to. Also a bit of writing here and there depending on our needs.

Been polishing the story sequences and worked with newprogrammer on adding new functionalities to the story tool. They weren’t that many, nor hard to code, so it was all made in the span of a single work day. The enemy we were working on is mostly done, we just gotta playtest to adjust the difficulty.

Did the preliminary set up for another enemy and should be implemented tomorrow (not as complicated). Tomorrow I’ll also continue cleaning up the story sequences, then more playtesting.

Hmm, the boss fight should likely be done by the end of the month depending on the behaviors we want. Story sequences might be ready by then, and the whole chapter wrapped up. Short term after that we start implementing localization tools. Long term I start a big grind with concept art and scenario writing for the remaining chapters. Establish a schedule with the freelancers for the remaining bosses/important characters. More environment stuff in the middle of all that but that’s the least of my worries.

A lot of work ahead but with things this clear I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to meet our internal deadline for an early alpha build. No release window yet but everything is coming along very well.

If anyone reading this is wondering about N1rvanna: there’s progress on that front as well but I can’t be as open as with Project D due to some delicate stuff going on. Nothing bad, just info I don’t feel comfy sharing until things are on more solid ground. Been very optimistic as of late.

So yeah, I’m working my ass off here! Please be more patient!! Games will ship at some point!!

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.

• 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.

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.

Shit, we already in the middle of July?

So these two weeks have been dedicated to relentless debugging of the sequencing tools, writing, concept art and learning new tricks. I also discovered why I’m more productive when I don’t post here: For some reason I think I’ll be judged if I write about my discoveries whenever I use “work hours” to learn things seemingly unrelated to current projects, which is really funny when put into perspective.

The way my brain works to stay productive is to never get bored with work, and a big part of it is learning stuff I have zero experience on, lay the foundations for future projects, or simply prototype random shit. So I guess I should talk more about that?

In any case things have been steady even if a little slow. Considering we have three and a half out of six chapters already written for Project D and an almost complete outline for N1rvanna I’d say tons of progress have been made in the past couple months, and I should keep reminding myself of that.

It’s really hard to truly see where you are if you don’t check the road traveled.

Newprogrammer had a funny thing happen where he was coding a feature that was already included in the Tween package we got for Unity. Then once implemented it proceeded to crash the whole engine until he found an undocumented option that needed to be turned on. He asked for a long weekend and had to give it to the poor guy. I know that feel too well.

Also took time aside to review and plan some merch stuff on the way. Hopefully it sells cause it’s been its own little nightmare to put together. And honestly, we could have gone for the lazy route of just selling print on demand stuff on an already established website but merch production is something I needed to tackle sooner or later.

Been playing around a lot with n1rvanna’s interface too. It’s sort of a thing I take personally since a lotta people disagree with the direction it’s going but I’d be lying if I said that I give a shit. I’m not making Va11halla again. It’s gonna be its own thing and part of it is looking different. Not saying there’s no merit in telling me it looks bad, just don’t ask me to make it look more like the previous game or I’ll eat you alive.

Still a mystery when the sequencing tools in Project D will be useable but I swear it’s looking great already. If Newprogrammer wasn’t doing that shit with really wonky spanish for the dialogues I’d post a webm (spanish ruins the dialogue window because the current font doesn’t support ñ or tildes. I’ll prolly need to add them myself).

Current tasks for this week include churning out more N1rvanna dialogues.

For this one I’m working in a non-linear fashion. For example, I make a list of the scenes I need depending on the story, then I write them in whatever order I want based on my current mood.

It sounds a bit chaotic, especially since I write Project D in a very linear process when it comes to the scripts themselves (not the chapter order). But N1rvanna is a lot more about the little moments rather than “moment to moment” conversations like in Va11halla. It’s a game that it’s gonna pride itself on being written in little bubbles; capsules in time that capture the lives of these characters in all kinds of situations, so I don’t think any other writing method will work to achieve this. It’s imperative that I focus on these little bubbles and then find ways to connect them seamlessly or else they won’t feel right.

Aside from this I also need to find a 3d artist for a secret thing, draw more characters and keep writing. I really don’t feel like working environments or doing anything visual so it’s probably gonna be just writing for the next four days.

Let’s see if I feel comfy enough to return to daily posts now. I’m not stressed or anyhing, just in case it sounds like that. I just enjoy identifying issues and writing them down, then check the results. Makes for effective quality of life improvements.

Work on the battles is mostly done and tomorrow we’ll begin with scene management. I’ve been also writing for both projects and it’s been steady. For project D I’m finally tackling the first chapter now that I feel comfortable with all the characters. This will still be the last chapter we make when it comes to putting the game together though.

That would be all for now. As per usual, work has been just grind without many big breakthroughs. Those should happen very soon though.

Lots of grindy work on the animation, 3d assets and programming side. Battles in project D work fine again after lots of drama (all manufactured by a camera I had to turn off but didn’t………….) and the whole enchilada is already very close to the previous stage, just cleaner, easier to understand and faster to work with. It’s taken its time but I think the effort is totally worth it. Tomorrow I have to do something vaguely business-y that I hope goes well, then hopefully I’ll have some time to go back to writing. Work is going really good even when shaky, but as I’ve been mentioning, it’s kinda boring to write the same thing every day when it’s a grindy phase.