ever/After

"[...] legends
in the evening
of monstrous battles, and secret
betrayals in the forest..."
— margaret atwood, the circle game

hi everyone! i'm a returning jammer! in january for my actual first game jam, i made a short demo for a game that i'm now working on completing. this summer, i want to familiarize myself with gamemaker and make a shorter, more straightforward game! this time around i'm hoping to make a game based on the fable of the fox and the cat, but with a more positive spin.

you play as a lonesome fox evading a group of hounds. it is guided by a strange, ghostly cat familiar, and repeatedly encounters a raven and a buck who have joined it in its flight. ideally, this will be a short, atmospheric game about resourcefulness and supporting those you love. it may involve some exploration and platforming, but the jam build will most likely be pretty linear, as i'm learning game maker from scratch, with no prior experience.

goals:
1.) finish the game! or at least concretely finish a level? i'd like to submit an entry that has an actual end state that can be reached. content could be expanded upon in the future, but i want to finally make something other than a demo.
2.) limit dialogue and narration. i want to see what i can convey and learn about writing without actually writing much.

thanks so much for checking out the devlog! i'll be updating daily or nearly-daily as time permits. c:

day 1 (7/9):

though i didn't have much time to work today, i started learning about and practicing some basic gamemaker things (sprites, objects, rooms, object events) and created a mockup room in which a stationary sprite can at least shuffle around! i also learned of a really neat animation that will be perfect (purrfect) for the cat character, which i'm pumped about!! (i'm also still a little undecided on the game's title, but this one is growing on me.)

the mockup:

this is really rough and i think the artstyle might be way too complex for me feasibly pull this off in two weeks, so tomorrow night i want to work on simplifying EVERYTHING. it would take me way too long to get my assets and atmosphere squared away if i got too caught up in rendering things or animating that fox sprite. gotta simplify and stylize! the other sprites will most likely remain silhouetted, but will still need some animations (basic movement & maybe some subtle acknowledging-the-player stuff).

tomorrow i also plan to start the other sprites, get the game planned out more thoroughly, and just do some general organizational/housekeeping things. mostly i just need to keep learning!!! gamemaker is a little intimidating because it's a completely new engine to me, but i'm excited!

days 2+3:

yesterday i fiddled with gamemaker for a bit and started thinking about tilesets, so i made a few very basic solid-color tiles to mess around with for level design. i also got around to some of the organization and planning that i wanted to do, which helped me figure out a more concrete scope for the game -- it'll probably involve just a handful of maps. (for now i'm thinking no more than five, though a few of them will be larger or more complex than the others.) i was starting to feel like gamemaker wasn't a perfect fit for me or this game atm though. i do like gamemaker a lot!! but i think i'd feel more comfortable learning it for a project with no deadline.

so today i actually decided to switch engines to construct 2, and i feel a lot more confident! it's also a completely new engine to me, but i'm feeling more at ease and more comfortable with the pace at which i've been able to work on things so far.

as far as assets go, today i also started working on npc sprites! they pretty quick and easy to make given that they'll remain silhouetted (but when i do work on the pc sprite, i'm hoping to simplify the fox to have a similarly solid form? trying to avoid too many details, colors, or finicky outlines). i think animations and assets in general are still going to take up a lot of my time, but i also need to start thinking about the level design and get that hashed out in the next few days.

sprites!!

they're just stationary for now, but i'm feeling good about them! only the deer really needs to be able to walk, because the cat is a floating weirdo and the bird is almost always hitching a ride on the deer. if i feel like i have time later on, i'd love to do some simple idle animations for all of them.

tomorrow i'm hoping to get some layouts squared away, make a main menu screen, and keep working on assets and learning about the engine!

days 4+5+6:

the player sprite can walk around! i still have to do its jumping & falling animations (plus polish its walking & idle animations), but for now just seeing it walk while i'm testing layouts is great. someone please tell me why i thought it would be interesting to make a game that's 100% animal metaphors though. i'm already extremely lazy when it comes to bipedal sprites, now i have to account for all these legs.

i also decided to add another npc! the sprite might not be very legible, but it's supposed to be a bulldog. this is the only actual dog you'll encounter in game and it's just a sad, tired one. more bark than bite lol. i've kind of eliminated a sense of urgency from the game because i'd rather focus on the platforming & atmosphere vs a lot of enemy behaviors, but i want to make that work with the theme; it's a game about growth and momentum more than anything.

i don't have any other visuals for this update because all of my layout sketches loOK AWFUL LOL but i've been getting a lot done! the other night i nearly lost all of my progress in a crash, but construct is a good pal and i was able to restore an autosave. since i last updated, i've set up a little main menu, imported & implemented all of the bgm and sfx i should be needing, and i've started sketching out layouts. for most of the rest of the jam i need to focus on creating backgrounds, objects, and platforms from those sketches, and then sorting out my collision masks so that the platforming works. it's harder than it might seem because i just have no experience making platformer maps!! i also have to make sure that i don't go over 100 events! :0

since last time:

a lot has been going on throughout the last week -- some stressful things (eugh), but also some pleasant things (monday was my birthday!) -- so i just wasn't productive for a few days there. but on the 20th i got back into gear, finished all the game's events (clocking in at 92 out of the 100 event limit), and started working on finalizing layouts. i actually had to cut a few of the layouts i had planned because implementing them would have resulted in too many events, but it was probably for the better. today i've been working on getting the layout art more presentable, tweaking literally everything, and doing a whole lot of playtesting!

i don't think i'm going to be able to include all the animations i wanted in this build (lacking a jump animation still hhhh) and the controls are really floaty, but there will always be time to update the game in the future. :x i would definitely like to return to this project as a learning tool to help me strengthen skills like sprite animation and level design! for now, there are still a few more little things i have to tweak before submitting the game, but it's pretty much done! the jam build will be up in a few hours!

it's always tricky balancing projects + life stuff. i'm excited that you were able to mostly able to submit though O: !! i'm looking forward to playing it!