Sukeban Games

Developer Diaries from the Sukeban Staff (mainly just kiri)

Category: Project D

  • february 19

    mostly productive day making a new environment that didn’t need much planning since it’s not playable, and the cutscene that takes place in there. It looks really funny using only temporary assets, but it makes me think about the viability of cutscenes as i’m doing them right now. I’d like to get one of those mocap suits to do em since i focus on rather mundane sequences, but we’ll see what the future holds for us. Newprogrammer made a breakthrough in the work he was doing so things are going rather smooth again.

    See you all monday!

  • february 18

    Spent the whole day tweaking and finishing how scenes and cutscenes are loading, which is something we completely forgot about. So let’s say there’s a cutscene and then we wanna load another scene that starts another cutscene, it’s that kinda problems we had no idea about starting out, but we finally came to a good solution that basically splits the elements of a cutscene in its own scene, then we load that along with the environment it takes place in. Tomorrow i should probably finish chapter selection to hook each button with their respective intros, and start doing some cutscenes with the new workflow. Multi scene editing is very comfy, but not gonna lie, it kinda made everything a mess since we knew shit about that, good thing to take into account for future games. Motivation is still shaky but i still get work done, even if small.

  • february 17

    ughhh still stuck in a rut when it comes to motivation but it’s coming back steadily so i’m not too worried. Between last night and today i managed to write the intro to file 03, and map inside unity the scene i had already drawn beforehand, pretty happy with the layout but i need to find the sweetspot for room length, i feel most of my scenes are pretty short in traversal and outside battles i don’t know how to make them longer-yet-interesting yet. It’s also possible that i think this because i’m not the player, i’m the guy designing everything, but i’ll find out soon enough when i give this to friends once it’s functional. I also did a quick timeline event for a more deliberate exploration phase, and need a clip or an emitter that can lock the player out of sprinting so they can only walk in certain areas.

    i hope i can map the rest tomorrow, since it’s only 3 or 4 more areas that aren’t very complex. Newprogrammer fixed a bug that broke everything for a couple days, so i have to playtest his commits.

    It’s been a rough week, not gonna lie, suddenly losing motivation is linked to something i’m yet to discover, but it’s coming back, just gotta be careful to not force myself while i feel like this and do my best whenever the ideas start flowing.

  • February 15 and 16

    Forgot to write yesterday! Spent most of the day gathering references for the big last scene of File 03 and drew the plans to then proceed to block it out inside the engine. Been also doing some extra research on the subject matter to better have a grasp of the dialogue I need to write.

    While I have a very good idea of how each event and sequence should go, lately I’m feeling extremely unmotivated and I need to find a solution for this. Now today I should be blocking out the aforementioned scene, and write based on the ideas and research I made prior, but I’ve reached a point where I’m not seeing huge tangible progress and it’s making me a bit anxious, as if all the effort we make everyday is not seeing as many quick rewards as before.

    I doubt this is all that’s wrong with my current state of mind, but it might be related. Newprogrammer is still knee deep trying to untangle how scenes are structured currently in order to better integrate asset loading between doors, and a lot of timeline and playable directors no longer want to work, which is extremely worrying. We thought we had something solid but it was shakier than expected.

    A lot of thinking needs to be done here, see where we can cut corners and whatnot. I’ve said this before but I don’t wanna spend more than two years in this project, though sometimes is not even scope (I think ours is very reasonable) but something more complicated, and I’m yet to figure out what’s causing me to get all uneasy. For now I’ll be a bit more liberal with my work hours, and instead of working from 9 to 5 in a mostly uninterrupted fashion, I’ll try to spread it throughout the day in between more mundane and life-related tasks, at least for a couple days just so I can still get work done without forcing myself to produce content I’m not happy with.

  • february 12

    Might have stumbled upon my least favorite part of level design: level design. While i enjoy the shit out of making things look good, i’ve realized i have a hard time coming up with the actual layouts for playable areas. While i’ll eventually find it fun, the growing pains sure are fucked. With this i mean to say that i blocked out the inside of the manor, which was a challenge in and on itself because manors are quite complex structures, even moreso when it has to be explorable, with areas large enough to host battles but also carrying the necessary detail to come across as lavish. It’s hard to explain, but the point is that my brain will need to accept the fact that stuff won’t look pretty inmediatly and sometimes i need to prioritize gameplay over looks. I’ll make it pretty once we settle on a good gameplay setpiece.

    With that “done” I can move on to the last piece of environment work for File 03. This last one is quite complex, and all about looks for spolerific reasons. Once that’s done we can start with cutscenes and craft the encounters however fits best. It’s sort of terrifying but that’s why we completed a whole ass level beforehand! to get used to all the stuff.

    On project X i made a new background, which i freaking love by the fact it’s starting to look like how i wanted valhalla to look. it’s hard to explain, but at the time i wanted an actual pc98 esque look, and while sometimes it has the feel, it still ended up modern (don’t get me wrong, i’m stupidly happy at how it turned out in the end). Now i’m kinda starting to break the code and I hope to keep improving!

    Have a nice weekend, everyone.

  • february 11

    more environment and background work. This time i might have stumbled upon a layout i’m happy with for the fancy place, which doesn’t look that fancy right now but i’ll move on and go back to it once i’m doing the cutscenes of that place, since it’s hard to land on anything solid until i know exactly the usage. Tomorrow then i’ll move to the interiors. Reminder to modify the size of the actual manor, might be too small.

    On project X i made some final tweaks to the bg i was drawing the other day plus a new one that took me a surprisingly short amount of time. Need to research the areas of ships where they do the pew pew so i can do those tomorrow.

    It’s crazy how i don’t enjoy drawing backgrounds in 2d, but since i began using the blender trick it all took a very cool and fun direction.

  • february 10

    modeled the outside of the fancy place and tried to do the environment around it but without a solid plan all i did was move thigs around and hope for the best… something i haven’t been doing since the start of the year, dunno why i fell into that time-wasting hole now that i know what it takes to make a visually interesting map. So tomorrow i’ll keep doing research and map it out. I think I already have a good plan, namely make properly textured terrain modules for elevation, it’s gonna look great. Gotta do some trees too.

  • february 9

    i’ll admit i didn’t do much today aside from tweaking some ui elements and gather references for the next scene on the list, which is rather complex for being a pretty fancy mansion and that’s something i’ve never done before. Made the layout, gathered a bunch of pictures, next is drawing a rough concept of how the interior looks like and then block it out in unity. I also playtested project X a bit and there’s some stuff to fix, mostly on the design side where the first rooms have to teach players how to play, and telegraph a bit more the tasks. Newprogrammer fixed an issue with transitions and scene loading for the objects holding main functions. Save system is done, what i saw of the skill tree an augment menus are done, so once he’s done with scene management we can start timeline managers, then new enemy integrations.

  • february 5 & 8

    i did work last friday, i just couldn’t be assed to log my progress, too tired.

    friday progress was all about wrapping up the entrance to a club, which proved to be a waste of time to do it all in blender since much of my tweaking is inside the engine when it comes to environments. Still looks good but past this entrance it’s already looking better and it doesn’t even have textures yet.

    I shared it on twitter if you wanna see, though chances are you already follow me there.

    today’s progress was quite thick, for i finished the sketch of a new poster, two new environments (the stuff past the aforementioned entrance), and finally figuring out a solid-ass workflow for project x’s backgrounds (different beast from what i’ve done before). Newprogrammer is now working on the asynchronic scene streaming for large levels but that shouldn’t take long. I need to playtest his progress tomorrow since i’ve been churning out environments without checking on his work which might be incredibly dangerous.

    see you all tomorrow.

  • february 4

    welp, i’ve caved in and worked until late to make up for a lost day (woke up late with my bad sleep, had to assemble a new chair while being a complete dummy at that kinda thing). Began work at 5pm and ended at 1 30 am, not proud of that and shoulda just taken then day.

    as for work, newprogrammer is almost done with the save system, i need to go back to the save and load interface to make sure it meets his cool demands (he wants a screenshot of the game, playtime, chapter name, etc.) but that’s gonna be tomorrow. As for me, i’m continuing my blender experiments with project X to middling success. The program crashed on me several times making me lose some work, and the road to make them as stylish as the original prototype is gonna be painful but hopefully rewarding.

    it’s gonna be a long road before i manage to capture the SOUL of the old one at higher fidelity.

    Finished a new scene in project D, not too happy with it! and might go back to the drawing board (mostly that i can’t find good camera angles, a sign of bad visual layout), but for now i’ll spear ahead with the next scene: a club.

    Something’s off, and i did this way too tired to notice, so this is likely getting reworked later.

    Boy, I really really need my healthy sleep back, i’m feeling the consequences super hard. And sign up to that gym!!!