Also had a call with newprogrammer to go over the final gameplay modules and features. In the past year we’ve been experimenting a lot; saw a lot of failure and a lot of success, but it’s time we buckle down and choose what’s gonna make the cut. Things are looking up! Now it comes down to how we want the game loop to be handled from a tools standpoint. At the start I didn’t wanna make a game with a traditional loop but I’ve realized that at least for this one it’s something we can’t live without. What we got right now then is a hub-ish design; sorta kinda like Astral Chain if you’ve played that. This was always the plan, but as I wrote I realized I wasn’t treating it as such plus our tools weren’t up to speed. For example, how will the tools manage as the game goes along?: Change NPC dialogue, available NPC’s upon entering a map, available places to go, items available at stores, which player data will be carried accross chapters? and so on. After we are done refactoring and cleaning up what we have pending we’ll plan the solutions for the aforementioned problems on paper before writing a line of code. Once a consensus is reached I can go back to writing the rest of the chapters taking these final design choices into account, hopefully finish before newprogrammer is done with said final tools and then we build the game (this time for real, we’ve had like two or three false starts if this blog is anything to go by).

I realize that a lot of this should have been done before a single asset was made, but we are still amateurs and this is our first action-ish game; one that’s also in 3D. Thankfully we have the resources to take as much time as possible to get it right, tho I’m still a madman who wants to ship this year.

Last but not least, Project X just suffered a major setback and it’s possible we might have to ice it until the stars align. Won’t go much into detail but let’s hope that’s not the case. It’s a huge morale blow for me because I like to work on several games at the same time for mental health reasons. When a project becomes overwhelming the smaller one becomes a comfort game… and X was just that for me. It was in incredibly capable hands and I was mostly drawing /giving light direction (like I said, it was in capable hands).

I’m crazy, man. I love making games and I make games to relax. How does that even work?

Time to bounce. Here are some screenies showcasing the new shader for characters and equippable items. I love it.

for project X i finished the character design i wanted to work on and turned out really good. I wasn’t expecting the direction i took with it, but i’m also not complaining. At all! next step is to make it a sprite if the team loves her as much as me.

Since my schedule has been a bit all over the place i think i can keep working in bursts over the weekend. Let’s see how that goes.

script for chapter 3 is done, i just have to extend what i have of the ending and send it to the team for feedback. I’m aware of a bunch of flaws but it’s nothing i can’t fix, plus they always have a bunch of ideas in can incorporate for better effect. Faceset for a third character in project X is done and now i have to design the final main one and get to the thing i wanted to do last week with the backgrounds. Newprogrammer has been chipping away at bugs and also completed a couple features i asked, like the debug thingie. It’s my hope we can work on the game’s levels again really soon when i’m done with the words.

it’s crazy how much the last stretch of februrary and march sidetracked me completely. I went from sleeping really well to whatever the hell i’m doing now. I’m still not crunching and get a lotta work done everyday, but it doesn’t feel as consistent as when i was working a 9 to 5 program. I need to make adjustments pronto!

so work has been mostly playtesting and stress the tools as much as i can, plus work on the secret project not related to games that’s almost there, just gotta test the final bits and then go ham with the rest. I feel a lot of people will appreciate this move and i’m very excited about it.

tomorrow i should finish the work on the portraits i was working on in project x, as well as resume writing what’s left of chapter 3 since i’ve been neglecting it.

Anyway, gonna fully pick up the pace tomorrow hopefully now that i’m also sleeping early-ish once again. Remember, rest is important and if you’re not feeling it take time for yourself and commit to actually come back.

If everything goes well i should be done with chapter 3 this friday, then monday we do our best to finish pending technical tasks that keep arising whenever i’m sure it’s just gonna be content generation, so i won’t say that anymore and just keep working.

In other news, june released a song they made a while ago for n1rvanna, it’s one of my favorites so go check it out!

Newprogrammer pointed out a few weird things regarding the timeline of events, and I’m really glad he caught on those since I feel my strong suit is character dialogue, not details of the world outside the room in which these people interact with each other, must improve that side.

For project X I made a cool face set to turn into pixel art later but works as a placeholder. Sophie told me that way she can get a better grasp on how the character speaks and I found that really cool. Might get a bit crazy with the angles of those facesets once i get into the meat and potatoes of the final versions.

It’s all coming along very well even if slow. Well, it seems slow to me, maybe I’m actually doing it at a really good pace… Guess I’ll find out in due time.

so for friday progress most of what i did was once again writing after solving a few contrivances i stumbled upon, and then proceeded to work on some backgrounds for project X, then today i kept doing more backgrounds and found out that there is a certain amount of dithering i need to achieve certain feel. Too little and it looks too clean, too much and it’s just a pattern overlay, so photoshop’s color reduction works just alright for what i need.

my stress has improved dramatically, i’m way more chill everyday now and getting some more exercise too, as a result whenever i focus only on work everything is done quite good! like, before stuff that would take me 6 straight hours of not getting up from my seat i can do in 2, so it’s not like i’m working less, i’m working the same amount of time, but with better results which is making me quite happy.

newprogrammer made a tool to generate enemies in project D from a model and has made things quite exciting, since i can now churn out new models and make them enemies right away, something that was sorely needed in this phase of development.

The more i think of the things left to do the more i despair tbh since i’ve said many times i don’t want to spend more than 2 years on proyect d, but we are already one year and change into it and doesn’t feel like we are any close to the finish line, but hopefully our optimizations speed things up.

• made new ui elements for several interfaces in project x and completed a new background, mostly left over work from last week
• might have finalized the look for chapter selection in project D, now we gotta hook all that up and continue with the cutscenes
• next big task is a better enemy and weapon creator for easier content generation (namely model some dude and then give it behavior with a few clicks)
• note so i can remember to playtest the skill tree at some point this week too