Continue-It Game Jam Devlog

Unfortunately, there is no new version of the demo for this game jam.  I've worked very hard on adding these features, but it's got a way to go before it will be ready.  The previous version of the demo is still available, but the features mentioned in this Devlog are not yet implemented.  This game is being rebuilt pretty much from scratch

Recently, I made the decision to work on Miracle Girl Chiyoko as my primary project. Of everything I've started, it's the project I've had the most fun writing, and I'm really excited to see where it goes! Over the last month, I've been working on adding some new features and cleaning up old ones to make the game more polished to play and more manageable to work on. The game is slowly coming along, but there have been some hardships this month as well, and I'm coming to the realization that this project isn't going to be as easy as I thought it would be.

I was hit with my first reality check pretty much the instant I resumed working on the game: this game was (and still is) a mess. Owing most of the clutter to the way RPG Maker MZ works, it was a jungle of over 300 Common Events and hundreds of switches and variables, many of which were in a random order, making them hard to find at a glance.  There were also tons of unused variables and events, due to having multiple iterations and features that were incomplete or unused.  The further I got, the more this issue piled onto itself, and I realized that if I was going to finish this game, it would have to be rebuilt from scratch.

And so, I began the long process of remaking the game, this time being more mindful of where the pieces are and how they are sorted. RPG Maker's indexed events and variables mean that once a variable or common event is declared, it has to stay in that position on the list forever, and it has to be hunted down in the GUI every time it's used (as opposed to just typing the name). So I've worked hard at both making sure that each one is in a logical place and making sure that there is enough breathing room to add more if needed. The biggest hurdle in this process has been the menu system, which is improved but still bloated, and will probably need to be refined again soon.  It was and still is the part of the game that is giving me the most trouble.

It's not all bad, though. As I've gotten much better at making plugins recently, many of the processes have been streamlined.  For example, to set a scene background, I used to have to type the string of the scene name every time, and one typo meant it would not work.  Now I can simply select the scene from a list in the plugin command, which is faster, easier, and error-free!  So I implemented the same system for displaying characters on the screen as well.  This also makes adding new assets, such as backgrounds and characters, much easier.

Aside from cleaning up the game, this month was dedicated to adding two new features: Visual Novel style character graphics, and interactive Life Sim events!

The first major addition to the game is Visual Novel character graphics!  This is something I wanted to add to the original version of the demo, but I ran out of time before I could get them in.  I think they make the story scenes a little less bland and help the player remember which character is which.  Drawing them is a lot of work, compared to simply drawing the portraits, but I think the end result will be worth the effort.

Each character will probably only have one pose and a selection of facial expressions.  I don't plan on going overboard with this feature, since I'm working alone.  Since many of the character graphics are noticeably better than the portraits, I've already begun updating those as well.  I expect I'll be adding facial expression variants there too, eventually.  Some of the backgrounds will have to be redrawn to work with these character graphics, since the elevations don't line up properly.