Developer Diaries from the Sukeban Staff (mainly just kiri)
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:
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.
More playtesting done today. Found like a million lil things to fix and a fun exploit we left for the people who care enough about finding the right equipment.
I think there’s only like one thing left to do with the boss before we move on to the next goal. That next goal? Controller support.
Since it’s impossible we finish the story sequences before we go on vacation, we’ll give gamepad support a honest shot and see how far we can go with it. I doubt it will be fully implemented but at least battles will be able to be played with it.
Didn’t write much last week since 100% of the work so far has been a massive grind of playtesting and writing. Sometimes it feels as if there’s no end, but we’ll pull through.
However, we are a bit tired.
This will be our last work week and from this Friday to January 6 we’ll take a much needed vacation.
Things to do before that: Wrap up the boss fight (aaaaalmost there…), finish the writing for this chapter (only a couple scenes left), and that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t feel like a lot but holy jesus, this is hard.
As a funny note, this boss has taken almost three weeks to get right, compared to normal enemies that take not even a day. Two at most.
Goes to show how good I want them to be I guess!
Well, I did end up going back to writing and setting up the story sequences in the chapter and I think I’m halfway done. And after lots of tweaking and playtesting the boss is like 90% there, we just need to include one last attack we have planned.
After this we’ll focus on the rest of the chapter and giving players more stuff to fight with. We already included a buncha things before this but you know, game won’t be fun without a shitton of options for battles.
It’s a good pace we have here. A bit slower due to the season and we’ll take a short vacation toward the end of the month, but the project is coming along well. Still no desire to share an estimate for the whole thing but shit’s going well.
All playtesting. Been doing nothing but that.
This boss so far is really fun to work on, and I’m not at all bored with it, just concerned with how long it might take. We’re on schedule since I was actually able to playtest before friday, and this week will be all about ironing out kinks and playing around with the behavior but you never know what’s gonna happen. The other day we spent an ungodly amount of time fixing some really stupid shit, so yeah.
I might not be able to polish the story sequences this week either since I’m laser focused on that boss being fun, but at the same time it’s giving me lots of ideas and by the time I go back to those they’re going to be better than originally intended.
I wanted to show some epic webbums of the boss in action but I really want that design to be kept a surprise until at least the reveal trailer.
Most of today was devoted to sound, particle effects and animation, and newprogrammer is going through my list of to do’s, so I’m assuming a continuation of this for the next couple days.