More writing and planning with n1rvanna (don’t ask, and don’t make me rush it please it’s going so well), coupled with character design for the current chapter in Project D. We have decided to move ahead and use Chapter 4 as the template for the rest since it’s less bloated (the script has 50-something pages, half of it gameplay compared to chapter 3’s 80-something with mostly cutscenes with a ton of sets) and compact, with less environments and maps (most of the scenes are for cutscenes and one big dungeon-esque map for the finale).

Newprogrammer has been fighting some bugs but tomorrow I should be able to playtest the new battles. As mentioned, the next step is the flow tools as I like to call them and then adapt the script into the game. I’ll have to finalise at least a rough draft of the entire game soon-ish if I want to outsource all models on schedule…

Didn’t update more since all of my work has been drawings and writings I can’t give much details about or show, so it’d have been the usual “been working on writing stuff”. The good news is that it’s all coming along very well. I’ve been also doing lots of research on certain topics, moods, how to achieve certain type of visuals. All fun.

Battles are working again on project D sans a few things like damage numbers (for some reason they all showing as MISSING) and the usual AI behaviors but it’s close.

I’m really feeling the work I’m doing as of late, even if it’s a bit more chill than expected. Turns out not all work on games is miserable grind and honestly the more we go along the more I realize just how much of this is ART. For a long time I’ve been helming things (unsuccessfully) in the direction of a software development company. Sure, we treat our games as art, but not the process… and now that I do, everything feels like it just works. Not saying there’s no problems or pressures, but the shift in mentality has improved everyone’s mood quite a bit and everything we do has more weight and meaning that before.

I just wish we never announced N1rvanna when we did, that way I’d be in ultra chill mode without guilt instead of “damn, gotta deliver at some point” (tho again, we had no idea about the ordeal that was to come). This is not to say I’m doing it out of some sort of promise or commitment, but rather the nagging feel on the back of my neck that comes with expecations is something I could live without. Whenever that game is out is gonna be some wild shit and I doubt people will be indifferent to it.

More writing work, and a surprising amount of revelations about game writing in general came up.

You see, in my free time I’ve been writing screenplays for films I’d like to make if that opportunity ever arises. So when I change over to game writing and resort to gameplay elements for characterization or set ups (think of Jill buying things to focus, or reading Augmented Eye to get small context on some characters), that’s where I realize the true power of video games as an art form. Things you can only transmit through visuals or dialogue in movies can be completely replaced by game mechanics if you know what you’re doing. Now, I already knew this! But going from a weekend writing a movie screenplay to game writing today made all of it the more obvious, and is subsequently making me integrate more game aspects with characterization and other aspects of the story.

I think newprogrammer is almost done with the current tasks of cleaning up and refactoring the battle system. Goal this week is to have all of that going so we can start the rest of the flow tools.

More writing at the park, by far my favorite activity now. Tho I wonder when the novelty will wear off. I think I’ll have to look for ways to spice up my way of doing things every so often in order to keep momentum when I need it, since it crashes down quite aggressively when I get bored of it.

For now though, it’s really cool! I like to write things with a pen since I can’t erase, so I have to think twice before writing a line of dialogue. Because of this I now act the lines out as if I was in a movie (I would already do this, but it was always after I wrote things down), and then I put the words on paper. The result is so far quite good, tho it doesn’t help structure that much; It’s my weak point.

Finally done with the migration and set up for project D (the tasks I mentioned yesterday, plus a couple new ones that arised today) and the game is looking better than ever. Next is to keep myself writing while newprogrammer wraps up the rest. There’s possibly something left for me to do but I’ll remember sooner or later.

Finished tweaking the last batch of player animations among other tasks, including new props and new vfx for grenade range. It felt quite light today, mostly by the fact I went out for longer than usual to do writing outside the confines of my apartment and computer. Just me, alone in the park writing my heart out on paper listening to cool music (the Lethal Weapon soundtrack this time). As it turns out I was able to concentrate big time, so I might start writing on paper more often. Preferably while outdoors.

Said writing wasn’t for project D though 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll probably finish tweaking the second humanoid enemy with the new proportions like I mentioned yesterday (couldn’t squeeze time for it), and look into a cleaner main menu using render textures (there’s a lot of camera conflict when I open it).

Let’s hope for further chill days ahead.

made some props for a new part of the setpiece, we just need the thing i mentioned yesterday about being able to link two separate battles. newprogrammer fixed the attack range and it looks great! he also adjusted the colors of the target rings to accomodate some visual cues for when your objective is being blocked by something else, be a prop or another enemy.

I was playtesting and paused the game in this frame. Thought it looked cool so I'm sharing! pic.twitter.com/MW4RlLXS5i

— kiri (@kiririn51) October 23, 2020

tweaked some of the rooms ever so slightly and began work on a new promotional illustration for n1rvanna (this one took most of my day), since an announcement is coming… don’t know when exactly quite yet, but i want to have art ready for that.

i’ve been delaying polishing the rifle mode all week now lol, i REALLY should get on that tomorrow, but knowing myself i’ll just keep doing cutscenes if newprogrammer does the battle zone tweak for multi part battles.

(nevermind the above, he already did that so my brain is gonna fuck up tomorrow, i just know it.. let’s see which task gets to be done tomorrow!)

edit: forgot to note that newprogrammer fixed a weird bug in the n1rvanna story editor, but it was so quick i forgot to archive that here.

lots of progress today on the sound department. i was able to quickly whip out an adaptive sequence using timeline hacks (bless this tool). The camera and targeting quirks were fixed, gotta tweak some more stuff but it’s not the disaster i saw yesterday. Also did more n1rvanna art i can’t show… plus we revamped how the area of attack is shown for the player since projectors were giving us some headaches.

next i have to polish the “rifle mode” with the new animations, maybe even make a new rifle altogether (using one i made super quick like a year ago), do another sound pass for things like footsteps, add a new functionality to the puzzle interactables and the cutscene that connects a victory against the boss to the other section of the level.

More playtesting, more n1rvanna concept art. Found two nasty issues, one already solved (some prefabs had duplicated scripts due to dumb reasons), the other is that by changing the camera the target issues came back sooooo…

started working on the audio for the bossfight by doing the behaviors and parameters in fmod, then to do the actual scripting.

pending things to do short term

• an actual death cutscene for this boss fight instead of the current placeholder
• the event that happens after the fight

more concept art, but this time n1rvanna focused along with finishing the outline for several characters in the story. Newprogrammer is currently struggling with the targeting that’s causing issues when there’s a lot of elements far from or outside the attack range.

Sort of a slow day with mostly grind.

not a whole lot since most of my work at the moment consists of playtest and drawing concept art. The boss for the set piece is almost there, we just need to fix some issues with the targeting system (it goes insane when you suddenly have a bunch of environmental things you can shoot). After that is done we will tweak the interactable system to support clicks (again) since there’s a pretty confusing puzzle at the end that would benefit from a top down camera to click the elements inside it instead of manually moving the character around (found out about this after seeing newprogrammer get lost in that specific bit). item mixing is working great, i love how it looks, just need to add some juice to recently created objects.

been also writing some character outlines for n1rvanna, but that’s gonna extend to tomorrow since i’m pretty tired and i have a sort of creative block right now. Hopefully when i wake up my hands will move on their own.