Howdy y'all. This is my first post here, as I kind of stumbled onto this game jam thing just this afternoon. I have a project that I've worked on off and on for years now, and I figured this might be a fun excuse to dust it off and put some more work into it. 

"I Need You To Rebuild" is a visual novel about nationalism, espionage, and dating your coworkers. 

You’re a newly hired employee in a governmental organization meant to stabilize a dying country in the aftermath of a great war. You are surrounded by political opponents hiding in plain sight, aiming to coax you to the other side, end your career for good, or worse. Seduce your opponents (in either the classical or modern sense, your choice) to gain knowledge, then play that knowledge against them (or just romance them in the normal way because you like-like them). 

The game is build in Ren’Py, and all graphics were made in SketchUp. Character Models are scratch models to be replaced with commissioned artwork later. I'll post a couple screenshots in the comments. 

Oct 1: I haven't worked on this in a while, so I did a preliminary sweep through the game's initial chapters to see if the story needs to be re-written anywhere, and check for bugs. I caught one bug but quickly identified it as a mistyped variable. There's a scene I wrote at the end of chapter 2 which is problematic AF in 2020 so I gotta rewrite that, otherwise existing writing is fine. 

I also compiled all my scattered notes and conversations about the game's story progression into a comprehensive Scrivener file. I'm currently writing out the beginnings of chapters 3A and 3B. 

Oct 2: I just realized that Renpy has updated since the last time I worked on this, and all the background images had to be redone with a larger resolution. After completing that I started a global set of variables called the GossipDex which keep track of all bits of juicy gossip throughout the story and whether or not said gossip has been discovered and used by you. There's probably a more efficient way to do it but I am not a programmer. I also attempted to use a Ren'Py plugin for an encyclopedia, as I wanted an in-game codex that the player could use to look up information as needed. Unfortunately even with installation instructions from the plugin author I am still not quite savvy enough to add it yet. 

Oct: 3 No programming or art assets today, just continuing writing Chapters 3A and 3B. As with Chapters 2A and 2B, these two chapters are happening at the same time chronologically, the player chooses which path they take at the end of the previous chapter. 

Chapters 1 and 2 were for introducing the world and most of the characters, but Chapter 3 is where the Free Time mechanic is introduced. Similar to games like Daganronpa, during Free Time you can choose a nearby NPC to spend time with before the story continues. In addition to increasing the NPCs' level of affection for you, they will also teach you in-game skills that can affect dialogue choices. For instance, spending free time with the bookish and awkward Alphonse Weston for the first time will teach you the ability Puns, and at certain times in conversation you will be able to make wordplay that will make everyone around you groan and kind of want to wedgie you. Meanwhile spending Free Time with the shipwrecked sailor Kat will teach you the Knot Tying ability, which might come in handy if you ever need to restrain someone later in the story. 

Oct 4: Another writing day. I'm aiming to get a build posted on itch.io once I get a little further in. 

Oct 5 was a lot of bug fixing, as while Ch3A is a mostly linear story, Ch3B involves more exploration and decision-making. Got the kinks ironed out so far. 

Made an itch.io page, but it's still in draft mode so no point in linking it yet. I'm excited to post a build here, but I know it would be silly to do so until both of the chapters I'm working on have a decent stopping point. 

Oct 6 mostly involved implementing one of the characters' Free Time modules into the story and squashing bugs around it. Why is Free Time in modules and not just written into the story? I call these segments Modules because they're meant to be modular. Each of these segments of one-on-one time with these characters are written so that they can be called at multiple points in the story and not be jarring or out-of-place. 

For instance, Chapter 3B has two different characters (Al and Kat) that you can spend time with, and you can only choose one before the story progresses.  Both Al and Kat each have three different Free Time segments that can be called at different points in the story. Let's say you're romancing Al, so you're going to choose Al during this chapter and get his first Free Time segment. Later in Chapter 4 if you pick him again you'll get his 2nd Free Time segment, and in Chapter 5 you can choose him to get his third and final Free Time segment. 

BUT what if you're not romancing Al? What if you're romancing some other character? Chapter 3, you didn't spend time with Al. Chapter 4, no time spent with Al either. Chapter 5 rolls around, and you think "Oh well, might as well spend some time with Al now." If you pick Al in this situation, because you hadn't picked him before, you'll STILL get his 1st Free Time segment no matter what chapter you're in. 

So yeah, that's the Free Time segment. It's not SUPER hard to code, the difficult part is writing scenes with characters that can be plugged in to different parts of the story. 

Oct 7: You know, I'm pretty proud of the work I've done this week. Doing a devlog every day has been a great yardstick to measure productivity against. Let's me know I'm not just spinning my wheels here. 

Today was mostly re-writes and "fleshing out" of existing scenes, but for the most part I want to focus on creating new stuff rather than editing old stuff. Editing should come later. This should be the draft. So I'm aiming to not do any more script rewrites for the rest of the month. (This doesn't include editing of code, which will be necessary every day). 

Oct 8: I've had way too many scratch graphics missing, and today was the time to fix that. I went into sketchup and made all the scenes I had been missing so far. Here's a few of the new scenes: 

That last one took FOREVER for my PC to render. I'm sure there are more effective and efficient ways to do these sorts of things, but I'm not an artist. I'm just happy to not have black screens for these scenes anymore. 

Oct 9: I am very excited to say that I finally managed to get the Encyclopedia plugin working! Y'all have no idea, I've been trying to get this to work since AT LEAST 2016. 

The player gets a cell phone with a built in E-Reader. This functions as a Codex which allows the player to explore extra lore of the world (while keeping it entirely optional if that's not your bag). Talking to NPCs about the customs and practices of this country will unlock excerpts from in-world books that can be accessed from your E-Reader at any time. 

Next I need to figure out how to make the entries more visually appealing. I want the colors to match the rest of the theme, and I also need to figure out how to format these entries so they're not just a big block of text. But those are problems for later. For now I'm just hype I finally have a working in-game cell phone. 

Oct 10: Nothing groundbreaking, just more writing. 

Oct 11: Writing new entries for the Messages and E-Reader thing. 

Oct 12: I've found that rendering the scenes in SketchUp helps me flesh out the scene's writing. Got a few new backgrounds rendered, and with it came a few extra scenes and concepts that help make the world a little more dynamic. Also wrote the game's first Bad End today, so that's fun. 

Oct 13: Wrote and programmed the first Escape-The-Room section of the game. As puzzle solving isn't the main focus of the game I didn't make it quite as challenging as a fan of the Zero Escape series might want it, but it's just challenging enough to let the player know that some puzzle-solving may be necessary. 

Oct 14: More writing, plus rendering a few more scenes. 

Oct 15: Been writing today, with a side of bug fixes. I'm at the halfway point for both chapters 3A and 3B. My goal is to have both chapters finished by the time Devtober ends. 

Oct 16: Spent most of the work today stripping out old placeholder music and replacing it with open-license music, then creating a comprehensive list of credits to include with the game's distribution. I'd love to include a jukebox feature with credits that pop up at the beginning of every song, but it's not necessary for the Oct 31st build so that feature is just gonna have to go on the backburner for now. 

Oct 17: BUG FIXES 

Oct 18: More writing. I think for this last leg of the jam I need to stick to focusing on writing the core story only, with music/graphics taking a back seat until after the jam. Even the Free Time modules gotta wait if I want to finish Chapters 3A and 3B before Oct 31. 

Oct 19: Still writing. The more I write the further away the finish line gets. Still gonna stay positive about it. The goal is still to get the current chapters finished by Oct 31. 

Oct 20: Some of my writing involving spy stuff needed to be rewritten, as I learned new stuff about how shortwave radios work. Silly me, I was under the impression that numbers stations worked on FM frequencies. Once I learned more about it, certain scenes had to be rewritten. I know very few people (if anyone) would have noticed or cared, but I would have known and it would have continued to bug me. 

Oct 21st-25: Lack of updates are not because no work has been done. Rather, all the updates would sound the same. I've been writing, shoving that writing into the game, and debugging the new scenes from there. 

I'm excited for my progress, but a little bummed that it doesn't look like I'll finish both current chapters before the end of the month as I had previously planned. Every scene in these chapters ends up being so much larger than I had originally anticipated. 

Oct 26-27: More writing and bug fixes. Some weird new bugs have been popping up, just as an end result from story paths branching out more and more. This is officially the furthest I've gotten in any videogame project. Neat! 

Oct 28: Getting down to the wire now. Just cramming in as much writing as I can before Saturday's submission. 

Oct 29: Whoops, I was under the impression that the jam ended on the 31, not the 30. Just getting in one last hurrah of writing and bug fixes. Will produce a build soon.

Postmortem: 

I'm told that post-mortems usually include a list of five things that went right and wrong each. Let's try that. 

Five Positives: 

1. Cell Phone Mechanics

This was the number one thing I wanted in the game but kinda thought wouldn't be possible at my level of programming knowledge (basically zero). I'm super psyched to have this working now. 

2. Free Time Mechanics

This one was a little more vital but not quite as programming intensive. The Free Time mechanic allows the player to spend one-on-one time with NPCs at set intervals in the story, and to choose which character they spend it with. I go into this more in the devlog. 

3. First Exploration Scenes Added

Rather than just a normal linear story segment, this scenes allow the player to explore an area at their own pace, and discover the narrative in a non-linear fashion. 

4. First Puzzle Scenes Added

In addition to the exploration scenes are Puzzle Scenes, where players have to figure out a puzzle before continuing with the story. 

5. New Character Added

Vanelle Marin finally makes her debut in one of the new chapters, which I've been waiting to do for quite some time now. 

Five Negatives: 

1. Writing Creep

While I had the rough strokes of each scene planned out long before writing them, the scenes themselves expanded and became much larger than originally anticipated. This led to scenes needing much longer time than initially anticipated to both write and bug-test. 

2. Wasn't able to finish Chapter 3A

Due to issue one, I wasn't able to reach the planned end-point of this chapter. 

3. Wasn't able to finish Chapter 3B

Same as the point above, I wasn't able to reach the planned end-point of this chapter. 

4. The opening scene is dated 

This is a game jam, so I limited most of my efforts towards the creation of new content rather than the revising of old content. The opening scene is one I am no longer happy with, and will revise after the game jam is over. 

5. Graphic needs updating 

As always, these backgrounds and character portraits are scratch graphics to be replaced later. 

In Closing

I joined this game jam without much forethought, but now this is the furthest I've ever gotten on a video game. I'm pretty psyched about the work I've done so far, and plan on continuing this until the story is finished.