log #1

Prejam prep : I thought abt the main gist of the plot. My game is about a human who stumbles into a fairy ring & gets stuck in a fairy village. They must pass a trial if they wanna go back home. The trial consists in making 3 fairy meals correctly by gathering clues & objects around the village. I'm incorporating common lore abt fairies such as the fact that eating fairy food results in being stuck in fairyland forever, and that metal repels magic (both will be plot points). I've chosen my engine (adventure game studio) & I've also made a couple of sketches :

Concerns : I have never done any video game design so I will have to learn how to use the engine as I go, and it's kind of hard to estimate how much time I will need to do what, bc it's so new. I will do what I can & try to keep my game short & simple.

(The title of the game is temporary, I'll try to think of a catchier one.)

Work done so far : I drew the background of the room that serves as a starting point.

Concerns : Gotta mess around with the resolution/scaling (?) for my background on AGS bc right now it shows my room as zoomed in & it's unsightly. Gotta make sure I keep my scaling consistent between rooms, also.

Short term goals : I'm going to aim to make 2 more room backgrounds today and define the walkable/walk-behind areas today. Gotta take a break first.

Those sketches are really nice!! The color palette is excellent. Also, I think you picked good reasonable goals, and it sounds like you should be able to doing it!

I look forward to seeing how it goes!

My first thought was "I love the colors!" but I see everyone is already saying that, ha ha. I guess it's a consensus! The colors are good!

log #2

Work done so far : I struggled with fixing the issue with resolution but eventually did after a minor freak out; managed to define the walkable & walk behind areas for the first room. Also drew the backgrounds for two additional rooms :

Concerns : None rn, but have to remind myself to stay consistent with my brush size (5px) & that the default size of my rooms is 640x480 (backgrounds may be bigger but not smaller than this). Also, have to breathe in when encountering technical problems.

Short term goals : Tomorrow, create the sprite of the playable character and 4 NPCs; define walkable/wb areas for the two new rooms & connect them. (Extra mile goal : create some dialog or items.)

im loving the look so far :>

Loving this look, It's like one of those coloring books I have, they getting really popular these days. Lots of cool VNs coming out from this jam.

log #3

Work done so far : She lives !!!

(I was just very excited to show this off, I will do some more work today lol.)

Conccerns : I have next to no experience with animation so I will keep it to a bare minimum in terms of look and amount of sprites I make.

Looks like it's working pretty well! And that walking animation is really cute, too.

She contrasts well with the bg but it still keeps it soft!

log #4

Work done so far : I made 4 NPC sprites as I was planning on doing altho I wasn't super inspired to make them and I don't find them great . At least they're p distinct from one another. I integrated two of the NPCs in the game with their speech animation. I also connected my rooms & defined the walkable/walk behind areas for the 2 I hadn't taken care of, and tweaked some of the backgrounds a bit.

Concerns : The scaling between characters & the background in this preview above is way off, I'll have to see if I can make characters change size depending on the room they're in, or if I'll have to redraw this.

Short term goals : Tomorrow - Research what the engine allows me to do, if anything, wrt character:room size differences; draw some more rooms (let's say 4), make the speech animations for the two NPCs who lack them & integrate them in the game.

General thoughts : I think I'm going to aim to design & integrate all the rooms & characters this week, then create & integrate all the items & dialogs next week. That leaves out some stuff like intro & ending sequences, which shouldn't take relatively long, but are still pretty vital. I'm also going to try to push through when I'm not feeling super creative, like I did today, and reach the goals I set; I want to create something that runs & has a beginning and an end. Perfection is the enemy of the good & more importantly, the done, etc, whatever.

I don't have experience with the engine so I can't help with that, but I adore that first npc's outfit.

log #5

I think I'm going to scrap most of the characters I made today, I don't want to be too much of a perfectionist but I'm pretty sure I can do better within a reasonable amount of time, like these two silhouettes doodles are already better than what I had for NPC 2 & 3 in my previous post :

Anyway all my sprites should all be taller than they currently are tbh. And today I was kind of just making characters from scratch in a pixel art editor & I don't think it's the right way to go at it. Doodling lots of silhouettes & keeping the best ones works better. Hm. Not sure abt this. But anyway I'll see.

i've wanted to try ags for a while now!!! i love your aesthetic, the doodly feel is very charming and i love the pixel colors... gl!!

log #6 (might be making an excessive amount of logs per day compared to other ppl but it helps me so, hm, yeah)

Work done so far : Made more character design doodles, I find these much more eye-catching than what I'd initially done yesterday. Characters made yesterday are definitely going in the trash. I'm aiming to make more or less 20 characters so these new designs account for half of them. Made some (non-animated) sprites for 7 characters, which are now a better height (abt 70px tall). Will not be redesigning them; but might polish them if I have extra time. Switched from using JPixel to Aseprite to make the sprites; huge improvement.

Also did some research wrt the scaling issue and it looks like I can change the scaling the playable character appears in for a specific walkable area. Doesn't look like it scales the NPCs accordingly tho. May have to design bigger-than-usual sprites for characters indoors and vary the scaling between indoors & outdoors for the playable character; I think it'll work out better than having everything be at the same scale everywhere bc my indoors background would look kind of half-empty in that situation.

Concerns : None at the moment. (Well, the skin color selection in 8bit could be better, but there's not much to do wrt that short of doing dithering, & I don't feel like it.)

Short term goal : I'm going to aim to accomplish the room-making goal I set yesterday (make 4), sometime this evening, but I'll postpone making speech animations because I did enough sprite work for today.

oooo these are some really lovely sprites!!

log #7

Work done so far : 3 new backgrounds! Would like to make a fourth but I have p bad handcramps. I also fiddled with my sprites some more to remove the white lines, I think they'll look better without them.

The foresty background will have fruits & flowers integrated as objects later. I'm p happy with my progress!

Concerns : Hand cramps ;_;

Short term goals : Make/finish the sprites for all the characters I doodled & doodle 10 more designs & make 1 or 2 more backgrounds tomorrow.

log #8

Work done so far : I didn't do anything yesterday bc I had a lot going on and/or was a little lazy (not sure which)! I'm going to try to do extra work today. I've completed my first batch of sprites, either modifying them or creating them. I've also made doodles for all the other characters!

Concerns : N/A

Short term goal : I want to draw 4 backgrounds today, it's quite a lot but I can do it! I want to get all my sprites and backgrounds in order for friday.

yesss look at all these cute characters. they are important to me

log #9

Work done so far : Did 4 more backgrounds as planned ! Things are progressing well.

Concerns : There are minor inconsistencies between the backgrounds but it's not a huge deal, I'll fix them if I have extra time or if they start bothering me.

Short term goals : Make sprites for all the remaining characters and 2 new backgrounds tomorrow.

AAA i love all of these fairies and how consistent their palettes + colors are. it's funny they actually remind me of oekaki (default) colors?? you've done a lot of art so far--keep up the hard work!

Oh man, I know this has been said several times but I am LOVING the aesthetic and colors of this game. The character designs are simple but distinctive and really lively, and even that basic walking animation you have for the PC is pretty smooth-looking!

Food is my one true love, so I'm automatically a sucker for any game that's about cooking, and this sounds like a really fun spin on popular fairy lore :D I'm looking forward to seeing more!

log #10

Work done so far : I made all the remaining sprites & 2 new backgrounds ! I'm especially fond of how the fairy monarch looks but I might change their colour scheme, not sure.

Concerns : N/A

Short term goals : Make lots of backgrounds tomorrow !! There's lots of indoors backgrounds I haven't drawn, thankfully these take less time than outdoors backgrounds.

log #11

Work done so far : I made 1 background yesterday and that was all, couldn't do much more bc there was a really long power outage. Haven't done any work today bc I'm feeling kinda terrible.

Concerns : Not rlly feeling motivated or excited anymore, hope it will pass.

Short term goals : Can't say I have any rn.

Everything looks really sweet and cute! I hope you can push to the end, good luck!!