Working in Ren'Py

Play it here!

Overview

Cloud Mage is a visual novel about a young mage and her familiar. She does weather spells for a living and you play as her as she creates spells for her clients in the form of weather sprites.

When you get a client, your goal is to select the correct ingredients to create the correct spell. The game keeps going if you fail. After all, your life's not at risk here and you can learn something, even from a failure. The overall mood of the game will be pretty casual and easy-going.

Assets

I'm planning on drawing all the art myself. As for music, I've been looking through CC-licensed music and I've bookmarked stuff I'm interested in using, mostly stuff that I think will fit the mood of certain sections.

Characters

The game's fairly light on plot, but here's a list of characters I plan on having.

Cloud Mage || Familiar || Gryphon Gunner || Cat Thief || Plant Tamer || Merserker

I pulled most of these characters out of a small WIP illustration project I'm working on involving RPG classes. I haven't come up with designs for that project yet, so I figured I could hammer some of those out while doing this game.

Gameplay

Most of the game is just reading the story. When it comes time for you to do your spell, you're taken to a series of menus where you select one ingredient from each category to combine them into a cloud sprite. Depending on whether the spell is successful or not, you get different dialogue from the parties involved. I took this code for an encyclopaedia/bestiary and edited it to make a journal that gives a short description of available ingredients and characters that you've met.

I'm pretty proud of myself for getting it to work the exact way I wanted it to. (I used the tried and true method of fiddling with every line of code until I got to the one I wanted :P) After it's unlocked, the journal can be accessed at any time and it gives you short descriptions that include hints about which ingredients are correct for which spell. It's like a puzzle element.

Branching is minimal as any number of different successes/failures will ultimately lead you to the same ending. (OR!! maybe it will lead you to the super secret ending??)

I'm juggling some other work and projects during the jam, but I love visual novels and I love text-based puzzle games (some of my faves are stuff like the Ace Attorney series and Zero Escape series), so I'm here to get my lil' game done, and get it done right!

(I'm also here to check out everyone else's games <3)

TO-DO:

Character Art:

Concepts (6/6)
Roughs (6/6)
Finals (2/6)

Encyclopaedia Art:

Concepts (14/14)
Roughs (14/14)
Finals (5/14)

Background Art:

Roughs (5/5)
Finals (0/5)

Script and Dialogue:

Outline (100%)
Draft (100%)
Revisions (50%)
**BONUS Day 5 (0%)
**BONUS Super secret ending (0%)

Coding:

Encyclopaedia (100%, to be tested after the game's finished)
Show and scene statements
Styling Dialogue
Character expressions
Revamped ingredient menus

this looks great! :> the art is amazing

Today was a writing/programming day, and lemme tell you, I haven't written so much since my fanfiction days. I forgot how much work it was haha...

Anyway! I finished the outline for day 1 (out of 5 or 6 days) and finished a draft script most of it. I got most of it to work. One feature I'm playing around with is the idea of asking your familiar for help, like a hint system.

Your familiar remembers which ingredients, if any, you've already used, and lets you know what keywords are relevant to your next ingredient.

After you've gotten your hint, the option disappears from the menu. I'm not sure if that's necessary, but I like playing around with the idea of menu choices that disappear after you've used them.

I'll have to go back in later and do the code for showing character art and aaaaall the missing art assets, but I'll worry about that later when I'm not up to my neck in writing nonsense.

Speaking of nonsense, I played around with using a list and pulling an entry off it at random to use. It's really only something I'll be using for flavour text, but I wanted to try it anyway.

And of course, I can plug it into my WIP script.

I was using Renpy's 'var = renpy.random.choice()' but the function doesn't seem quite right for what I want. I wanted to be able to make a list of ridiculous shop names where a different name is used every time I call the variable, but it seems to lock onto a single name. I tried to go around that by using, 'var1 = renpy.random.choice()', 'var2 = renpy.random.choice()', etc, but then there's overlap in the list if var1 and var2 happen to choose the same name, which I also don't want. I guess I want to make it so that it 1) uses a different entry in the random string every time and 2) doesn't ever use the same entry twice. I don't know enough about python to use its random functions either X__X

It's pretty silly and nonessential though, so I won't be too sore if I can't get it to work, but it'd be nice.

I didn't work on any art assets today, but I put some more of my rough drawings into the game as placeholders. I'm hoping I might be able to make a small demo of Day 1 in the next several days, and see if I can get people to give me feedback on it!

whoooaa! I adore the designs for the cloud mage! She's so poofy just like a cloud!

this looks SO fun and whimsical aahhh
what a fun idea. i love the silly entries so much

AAAA i love your art and designs omg it's so fitting for this game!! also im yellin @ the pussy willow omggg

omg i was cracking up at pussy willow.

but i really really love this game idea and the art youve made for it so far is so cute!! cute witch designs + interesting witch concepts + silly encyclopedia entries in games is what i live for

I love how many devlogs there are now, I'm drowning in them, absolutely drowning in their abundance, and I love it.

Didn't get a lot done today, but I did come up with a design for the gryphon gunner, which is basically an unholy marriage of an aviator jumpsuit with cowboy riding chaps. Might tweak it some more?? I just now had the idea of her wearing an falconry glove on one arm and I'm mad I didn't think of that earlier!!!! Anyway.

RIP my Binding of Isaac screenshot placeholder.

And here's another encyclopaedia entry!

I'm pretty tired, but I might try and do more of the script outline. I really want to get the outline done so I can get to the juicy stuff.

Today was a typing day, phew. I'm just now realizing that doing a text-based game requires lots of that, apparently?? Anyway, today was roughing out some outlines, I spent my drawing time today on doing the colours for a postcard instead of art assets for this game. I'm going to try and get as much of the draft script/prelim coding done tomorrow as I can. Hopefully like..... all of it. But we'll see.

I am definitely noticing that two weeks isn't as long as I thought it was ;__; but!! The most important part will be to get all the writing and coding done. Art assets I can leave alone, at least for a while. If I have to leave placeholders in, I'm ok with that.

Aaaaaaand another encyclopaedia entry!

Yo, I love your art!