Devlog #4
Start of Customized Backgrounds and Updated Sprites
Finally took the time to start making backgrounds for the game so I could get a proper small demo out soon! Of course, there is still a lot to do, but right now, I am working on the starting area and reworking some of the dialogic events within it so you can inspect things like missing posters, graffiti, and even ask a few questions to Seilrin. More backgrounds will be made in the coming days, but I am taking it slow since I wanna give every location character and make it look lived in if that makes sense. Plus, backgrounds are not my strong suit, but I am gonna have to pull it together for this project and use what I know to the best of my abilities cause I may love making characters and designs, but they pretty much can't just stand in a literal photo for a BG forever. Besides, it just looks awkward having my simplistic-looking placeholder sprites standing around in a realistic-looking setting... I may update this street BG way later, but right now, my focus is on the two other locations and coding interactions.
With sprites, I had to quickly implement a highlighting feature by just dimming down the character sprites, so it would make it easier to tell who is talking and such. I am gonna have to find a way to make it look better when I make the redone sprites, but this is what I have for now as an example of what I mean.
I also took the liberty of having to scale up the sprites because they just felt way too far back to me, but this is subject to change, especially in terms of scaling things for my future backgrounds...
Giving a face to Josiah "Infin" Wells
If you take a closer look, you can see that I added missing posters of Infin and promptly gave him a face, which will be used for a cutscene that will be made once backgrounds and story tweaking are done. Adding missing posters is not only an environmental storytelling bit, but it just makes sense, considering this is a missing person who needs to come home immediately. It's pretty much a no-brainer. Below is a sketch of Infin as a cooldown sketch from the background, and just cause I like randomly sketching stuff.
Infin was an Aotu World oc who I repurposed after I just fell out of the series and fandom, so I redesigned him properly and decided to have him as the person you are searching for. More things about him will be revealed through questioning, so you aren't just looking for info about potential suspects but about the victim himself.
Slow and Steady
Developing right now is rewarding knowing that things right now are working as intended, but sometimes I can't help but feel like Patrick from Spongebob with that board nailed on his head. I am doing something, even if it is a little progress, and the little wins count for me because I don't want to feel discouraged when a concept or gameplay tactic just doesn't wanna work. As I said, I will work on backgrounds and proper interactions between characters. Cleaning up dialogue to make it more natural is hard, but it's worth the effort if it means that my characters will sound distinct.
I also have been taking regular breaks, which has helped ALOT in keeping my mind fresh on some ideas and coding trickery I could pull with Dialogic and Godot, so I am happy that I am scheduling myself rather than spending hours having to stress about my dev work. This is for the best, considering I have more classes coming up that involve math, which will probably make me cry more than coding ever could. I hate numbers, yet I supposedly am good at them, according to my family. Either way, I recently bumped the topic of my game to 30% thanks to the steps I've been taking, so yippeee!
Stay Bright ! - - Neon (˙∀˙)🎮