Hi all! We're .... wait hold up we haven't figured the name part out yet --

 Ah yes okay

Hi all! We're XxShadowlordxX and we're super excited to participate in this season's jam!
Our game is a Visual Novel /  Restaurant Sim set in a space cafe. If that's not immediately exciting to you, read on. 

The main backstory is that once humans advanced and started to communicate outside of Earth, they became part of the intergalactic community.
A main citadel evolved where all species sort of cross-over and that is where a council with representatives of each of the four main factions/species can come and discuss the laws and rules between the worlds
Tegan wanted to create a cafe where all species could feel comfortable and so, in the safe neutral zone of the galaxy, set up shop.

Tegan, a human on the citadel who has always dreamed of making a café where all species can come in and get along. She wants to make things equal and fair for everybody.

Along the way you'll meet and get to know 8 unique characters, a few of which I'll introduce in the coming days. 

DAY 1: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 2: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection-connection?before=7#post-337715
DAY 3: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection-connection?before=8#post-337964
DAY 4: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 5: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
Day 6: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 7 & 8:  https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 9&10: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection... 
DAY 11: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 12: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 13: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...
DAY 14: https://itch.io/jam/my-first-game-jam-winter-2018/topic/180457/devlog-confection...

OKay okay okay, this is gonna be pretty long for the first day so bear bare with me.

Alright so we kinda did a lot so if you're here for the pretty pictures ill get those out of the way and then you may go.
Our artists, Banrabbit and Iris were hard at work creating mockups for desserts and characters

I feel the need to break up the pictures with meaningful text but I cant think of anything so ....... 

You'll meet our first character tomorrow but for now all I can say is that he ........ rocks....... thats not even a pun on his name or anything he's just a real cool dude.

Our writer Tibby  got a solid feel for the personalities of the 8 characters and began working on the many (MANY) different endings you can achieve with the smattering of characters.

And after a long discussion and debatably too many strawpolls (though you cant have too many strawpolls)

we decided on MC's name and attributes ... i think

we did right guys

okay I think its Tegan. Yeah Tegan, who's snarky and fun, a little sarcastic but optimistic and kind.

We started talking about character races and design choices for them and Banrabbit drew up this design for an alien race: 

Banrabbit and Iris also chiseled down the desserts to a tentative 25 or 23

And finally, banrabbit the mighty un-resting boy made this:

And with that, he rested. 


Lastly but not leastly, our programmer began putting together the first build of the game, complete with lovely placeholders and everything:

And here's all the implemented features for those of you who are boring (jk love u)

CUMULATIVE STRAWPOLL COUNT:

6

making decisions is hard

And none of this would have gotten done had the team not shared cat and dog photos in our brainstorming channel parody channel called the Dog Cafe .... what a concept

Thanks all for reading and I'll see you tomorrow with an update on the music and audio in the game ... hopefully

-Myserval <3

oh no oh no oh no I missed it ... sorta 
this is day 2!

As promised, I'll be introducing new characters along the way, starting with this one. Gaius!

Well, Gaius and his bird companion, Emily. Gaius is a musician at heart and an earth elemental in body. Here's how Tibby describes him:

Flirty, somewhat egotistical, mischievous but nonchalant

Couldn't have said it better myself. Cause I didn't say it. But still.
Gaius is a master shredder and an amazing flirt. 

Guy's a free spirit, and doesn't care about much, but unfortunately, the citadel isn't so free. His requests to have a concert at the citadel keep getting ignored and his music keeps not appearing in various shops around.

His bird Emily, however, isn't quite as big a fan of rocking out as he is. But she still loves him. But I don't wanna spoil too much else!

In other news, we all began planning out what we could do in 2 weeks, in particular cutting back on the scale of dialogue. We're gonna flesh out two characters for the Jam version, and plan on fleshing out the rest of them after the jam is completed. But I'll still be introducing the rest of them over time cause it's still fun! 
ONWARDS!

The audio team (Tibby and Myserval) have been hard at work on themes for characters. Here you can find a sound test for some of the early theme sketches.
https://clyp.it/uj33qidq?token=a0a44972ed96392ff2f3fd481a840d5d

And then in programming, 

worked on clock and scheduling code, because I got stuck on a dumb edge case I didn't have time to write up example data and plug it into the UI, but a clock/time management system is there and works and I'll make it playable in the morning.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll have more for you day 3~!

Let's start right off the bat with some music! Myserval whipped up a couple test themes to get a feel for how the music in the game should sound. 
Here's a mischievous one: https://clyp.it/1fjwwhxz?token=0c2fcaded34f30f0b373cc33ce2bae60
And here's one for the tutorial: https://clyp.it/bujhs1rp?token=da3ff8d720a496f56a9110755893513b

Tibby began work on another character's theme (whom you'll meet tomorrow) and started sourcing inspiration tracks for characters. 

Honestly I thought that'd be a lot more interesting but hey now you've got cool music to listen to while I talk about the next stuff!

Next stuff of course being art - duh i mean of course its art what else

Banrabbit created this for the kitchen layout - look at it! It's so pretty!

Speaking of the kitchen, we started talking about how interactive the cooking elements should be, and whether or not the interactions are worth creating more assets for. To start off with, it's a good idea to add some sort of intractability and chance of failure. Oh! I'm realizing now that I haven't touched at all on that yet so allow me to [copy and paste from what our programmer wrote up]. This would be a good time to start playing that tutorial music

(All numbers are fudged for the sake of example)

You have a 6 hour shift from 2pm to 8pm

When you start you see a clock in the corner it only advances when certain actions are taken:

• Taking someone’s order (5 minutes)

• Preparing food (10 minutes)

• Having a story conversation with someone (20 minutes)

Serving food consumes no time

People come in at different times of day and will have one of 3 possible indicators over their head to reflect their state

•  means they want your attention, if it’s yellow it’s to order food, if it’s red it’s because they have an urgent conversation

•  means they’re waiting on you to serve food they ordered

•  means they are thinking/eating/content, they’re not actively trying to get your attention but you can try talking to them anyways and you might get a story conversation

TL;DR: Actions take time and you're gonna have to balance them if you wanna ever have a chance at a connection.

Whew okay anyways we talked about having a mini game to play whenever you make a recipe, which determines how well you cook whatever you were trying to cook. Like, a candy crush sort of game with all of the ingredients you'll need, or similar scenarios.

Well there weren't any dogs either today which was somewhat disappointing but we're all working on the game so no dog cafe today! But tomorrow you'll be seeing the next character (one of the mainline ones) and hopefully soon you'll be able to play it a bit!

I think we're at 8 strawpolls now

Thanks!