whoops, forgot to log my progress today.

not a lot to say for i basically tested battles, doors and the last bit of the blocking out phase of the scene i was working on and all that’s left there is iterate as we play around with it. after that i did some drawings to plan out the next environment and i think i’m halfway through the whole ordeal since only 4 environments are left to be made for file 03, so i’m pretty excited with the speed i’m going. newprogrammer had some big headaches so he wasn’t able to properly work today, and honestly, same, my sleep has been atrocious since friday, i go to bed and i really don’t wanna go to sleep, i get all anxious and all i wanna do is watch a good movie, play a game or work on a hobby project. Speaking of which, i tried to play around after work with some middleware implementation on a project i use to test stuff and my brain simply shuts down, i might be getting old or my body really doesn’t wanna do anything resembling work on my main computer. maybe if i start using my laptop for side projects i’ll be able to trick my brain but i’m getting sidetracked. Tomorrow the grind must continue.

blocked out roughly three sections now from the scene i’m working on, following some useful tips i saw in some gdc talk about game cinematography. Since this map is focused on battles i’m mostly just doing arena-style layouts and corridors so the player can just fight and proceed, fight and proceed. I need to practice more complex layouts since i still don’t have a proper feel for level design outside my new understanding of the aesthetics…

I really wanna wrap this up tomorrow so i can jump to another scene that has a pretty interesting outdoor set up that i want to experiment with.

Woke up super late so i worked past my usual cut off. Still worked the same amount of hours though.

So i partially finished the scene i was working on, and tomorrow onto the next. I seriously need to stop getting hung up on minute details and get used to block things out…

Newprogrammer is doing some research on how to make proper unity extensions in order to better build stuff like skills, dunno how long he’s gonna take but I’m looking forward to the results.

Self reminder to answer pending emails.

took it a tad easy today for i’m a bit blocked on how to proceed with one of the playable environments, needs lots of careful planning before i waste my time like in the previous map, so it’s been mostly brainstorming and drawing. Been also working new skills and logistics for the skill tree with newprogrammer so we can complete that in a timely manner before i can start working on file03’s content. For now i’ll try to relax over the weekend while i come up with ideas and then go all monday morning.

woke up a bit late today since i couldn’t sleep at all, something’s got me uneasy and it was really hard to relax and close my eyes.

Spent most of my hours working on the environments from the list while newprogrammer does the remaining features we thought were complete, overall just grinding stuff that’s already planned. Speaking of planning, been having some issues working on a morgue scene for i can’t find good reference on what a morgue needs in term of equipment, and i have no desire to visit a real one anytime soon to find out; it’s been tricky to research. On the bright side I finally started seeing the point of sketching stuff before modeling and texturing, it’s saving a lot of time since any iteration i make doesn’t involve doing the whole thing again. It’s what i’ve been saying all this time, planning is for people who already know the kinda work it entails to do X or Y task, now that i know the ins and outs of 3D modeling i can finally take my time to plan ahead.

Tomorrow i’ll likely start modeling the scene, providing i come up with a good layout on paper.

Goood shit, began the week with high energies even if i have some uhh, personal worries. Last friday we made a list of everything we’ll need for File 03, and part of it were a number of environments that i have to make, 8 of them to be exact and almost half of them are recurrent places, like Reila’s house, the HQ (doing these again since a lot changed since), a morgue, shady alleways, bars, etc. some of them are unique, like one or two but if we finish the bonus mode then all environments will be reusable! gotta squeeze everything for what it’s worth.

But anyway, out of the 8 environments, I’ve already drafted and prototyped 2 in a pretty refreshing fashion since i actually drew what they were going to look like and then did my thing with blender and pro builder. The results look pretty natural (as expected from all the studies I’ve done when it comes to environments) and they shouldn’t take long. The ps1esque limitations are in place so i can go ham with scenes without going crazy. I want dense places to explore and this is the only way i can make all props and whatnot in quick fashion.

Tomorrow i’ll keep blocking out the rest just so we can move ahead to content, and will texture in parallel to that, just need to organize myself a bit better. Pretty fun day! These places are not huge spoilers so expect some before/after shots once i’m happy with the results.

Not a lot of work yesterday since i had to attend some private matters and what little i did amounted to writing down some minor ideas and some sketches for one character that needs a redesign.

Today was a bit more busy, we just finalized the chapter scenario, from here on we gonna call it File 03; that’s right, we are gonna start by the third one so we can make the last and first chapters by the end of the schedule and use the learned experience for a good start and a good end. Anyway, file 03’s scenario is mostly done (we only need to clear up some of the dialogue that happens in the ending bits), made the list of locations, props, characters and other things i will need to make and outsource, it’s a fairly long chapter but despite that the amount of work is not that huge. We’ll begin this monday and then work on the rest of the scenarios in parallel. I recently finished the one for File 02, and currently in the middle of File 05. Right now we are planning for roughly 8 chapters of variable length. It’s a big game, but still with a considerable set of constraints to make it all viable.

Monday we’ll also need to wrap up some of the basic features we’ll need from now on, namely checkpoints, saves, skill tree, augments menu (more like uncomment that feature, lol), asyncronic loading (for levels that have more than one scene), and multi scene editing.

Shit got real fellas!

Here’s a Reila sketch I made last night cause i couldn’t sleep.