I'm sorry GUI designers, I have underestimated you. Well, I never thought it was easy at all, don't get me wrong; but it reminds me of when I first tried to learn to improve my drawing.

I suck, and I have no idea what I'm doing. But isn't what this jam is about?

There aren't any finished elements to show so I shan't showcase the horrors just yet, but I've worked on several more things since my last log. Nothing too screenshot-worthy. Multiple enemies require a loot pool to roll the chance for each possible item drop, as well as tally up gold and exp. Another basic functionality for my collection.

I've also got in most of the implementation for selling things to the shop. I have one last thing on my list before we both move completely on to the graphics; level-ups. Characters gain xp, but I haven't gotten round to actually implementing the level-up process yet. Well, I don't expect it to take too long.  I just need an exponential xp curve and decide how many stats characters should get on level-up...though I suppose skills on level-ups are also pretty RPG-typical.

I've been making major progress on my dissertation project lately - in fact, the first (and by far the most difficult) part is finished! That also means things are short again, even though I didn't post a devlog yesterday. I'm pretty happy that I have 90% of the functionality down by the week mark, though - even if I fully expect many bugs to surface.

I hope you've all had success with the progress of your own projects. Until next time!

Day Eight

Well, that should be all of Robin's sprites done!

No talk me im angy

I wanted to get Gareth's done today, too, but unfortunately things just kept piling up. On the other hand, I did make some really tasty donuts, so...hey. Small victories.

See you tomorrow!

- Soul

Day Nine

Got a bit more done today, thank goodness. This includes more VN art, story plans, and...pixel art? Hoo boy.

Gareth's sketch probably had to go through the most changes between that and the line art. I also changed his shades to be red, since that way, every party member has a little bit of red on them. That's like...visual theming or something.

Well, red is also my favourite colour, but that has nothing to do with this decision. Totally.

With all the sprites done, I also fixed all the align transforms so that the sprites aren't layered on top of each other. I could also mess around with layers but uh...nah. Priorities.

Also, yes, Robin is beeg. They could snap Clara in half, but they won't because they're a cinnamon roll. Please ignore the skull necklace, it's not important.

You don't want to see the code behind this, by the way. One of these positions is called 'better-left' and one is called 'better-less-left'. Why did we do this.

Pretty much all the core scenes have been planned (and 95% have been written), but that still left the finale to contend with. On reflection, I'm not planning to do multiple endings, since that would be outside the scope of this jam. I guess that technically makes this a kinetic novel now? Huh.

And finally...the pixel art. I've done pixel art like, two other times in my entire life, so this was a bit tricky for me. The first four were the progression of the 32x32 sprite for Clara, while the last one is as 32x64, since we thought the 32x32 looked a bit small next to the slimes. Personally I prefer the 32x32 sprite, but we'll see. We might end up going 32x32 in the end and just scaling it up more.

Aaaand that's it for today. Phew! We're really getting somewhere with the art stuff, huh? Aera's been hard at work on a few sprites himself (along with some other improvements), but I'll leave him to cover that. See you tomorrow, folks!

- Soul

A final devlog from I.

We're not dead. I was definitely more productive at the beginning of the jam, but I think we're on path to push something out. That something might be different from what we had imagined, but it's there.

Where to begin? We've done a "first pass" (partially a joke at this point) on most of the art assets in the game, prioritising quantity. We have 4 enemies for each area including a boss, as well as a final boss, capping out at a relatively small 13 enemies. It's quite a short experience. I've added equipping and using items out of combat, rest stops, implemented the new areas, there's some status effects like poison and a stun ability, a revival move and item, a boss that continuously summons minions, a bunch of new items, all enemies have a unique skill...

Generally this is more of a pre-post mortem, though.

While the RPG system was partially my idea, and entirely my idea as far as implementing it through Ren'Py - it was a little ambitious for a 2 week project. Just getting half of the basic framework into the game took me a week, and that was at a frankly pretty quick pace. While more content can be added quite quickly now everything is done, the basic workings took most of my time. I hope there aren't too many major bugs, and things look to be fine, but we haven't really had time to do many test runs beyond features breaking while we're implementing something else.

The real killer is all the non-code assets that the now base of the game needs. Every enemy, ability, gui and item needs their arts - although we haven't managed ability graphics, and the enemies aren't animated. We'd have all those things at a decent quality as well as SFX in an ideal world, but there's just not enough time for it, even at a rush. Several features were cut as well. Perhaps we'll polish the game up more in the future, especially when I'm done with my coursework.

That aside, I found it to be an enjoyable learning experience. I have a (slightly) more concrete idea of how long things take to develop, and I've had fun tinkering with how to program a turn-based combat loop among other things. I mean, it's a little wonky, but it gets the job done.

Soon, if things go well, I'll be trying ("trying" being the key word) to develop a short VR shooter with some Metroid inspirations, and I'll be taking many of the things I learned during the jam with me.  Obviously not how to program turn-based combat loops, but more general lessons, like knowing the value of sticking to small, easy to achieve tasks is even greater than I originally thought.

This was my last ramble for this jam. Thanks to everyone for participating, making things interesting and letting me see their own creations.

Soul's Post-Mortem

Man...it's certainly been one hell of a journey. I think in retrospect, we could've reduced our scope a bit, but we did just about manage to get it done in time. That's worth celebrating, right?

Anyways, I'm going to keep this short, since you can see a lot of the dev troubles by looking over the previous log. Hope that's okay!

The Stuff That Went Right

Having never done actual games development before, I wasn't entirely sure how much I would like it. Overall, though, I definitely had fun, and I think Aera did, too ^^

GitHub

Aera showed me how to use GitHub early on, and I swear, there's no way we would've released on time without it. Definitely recommended for others in game dev!

The Writing

I figure you're always the worst critic of your own work, but still, I'd say I'm pretty proud of what I did with the writing. It's nothing too mind-blowing, but I think it has some good funny moments, and the novelty of the plot might help carry it for some people. I wish I had time to add a few more scenes, but now the jam's over, I can do that at my leisure :>

The Art

I have some major self-confidence issues when it comes to my art, but I was surprised at my own ability to consistently pump out the art we needed. Aera did some of the item sprites and such too (I can't take all the credit), but I'll give myself a pat on the back for pushing my way through it.

The Coding (Mostly)

I think it was pretty few and far between that Aera had trouble with the code—anything that came up he tended to work out pretty fast. I'll leave him to detail that part, though ^^

The Stuff That Went Wrong

Scope

Realistically, I think it would have been more sensible to cut one of the dungeons, or maybe even two of them. As it stands, we were really cutting it close...

Music

I really wasn't expecting this one, but getting the music to work right was a pain in the ass. The actual tracks were fine (I'd planned to use PeriTune from the beginning), but Ren'Pys method of managing audio is really, really odd. When I was trying to implement quieter music during dialogue in the dungeons, I really wanted to rip my hair out.

Pixel Art

The main VN art is...okay, but I think my own pixel art could use a lot of practice. I mean, sure, this is my first time doing any major bit of pixel art ever, but I'm still not really happy with what I came up with. I'll be working on replacing some of the jankier sprites when I can.

Whenever I Had to Do Any Coding

Also known as 'Soul breaks something, then cries to Aera about how broken it is'. Oops!

Closing Comments

It's been a great experience taking part in this jam, and I think I owe that to the community! Everyone has been awfully sweet, and I'm really looking forward to playing everyone's games.

And uh, for anyone who's been following this dev log in earnest, thank you so very much. Your comments have really given me the motivation to keep going ^^

Anyway, that's about all from me, at least for now. Take care!

- Soulwithlife