Hello! I thought I'd make my DevLog ready for when the jam starts just so that's one less thing to worry about on day 1. This is my first jam so I'm a little nervous on how well everything will flow and all that... also pretty excited at the same time! It's officially started, yay!
I'll be using RPG Maker MV as my engine and my game is going to be a sort of retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but from the point of view that the wolf isn't the bad guy!
Goals
- My first goal is to create a finished game in 2 weeks (and actually finish it, not give up or run out of time)
- The second goal is I want to utilise parallax mapping for my maps so they look cool
- The game is going to be more a story driven RPG, so there won't be any battles. There will still be gameplay of course, but there might be more dialogue than your typical RPG. I suppose it's planned to be a cross between a Visual Novel and an RPG.
- And, I would like to have some basic quests in the game (probably very basic.. like fetch item A for villager B, etc.)
Plans
- I don't have too much planned yet of course, but I'd like to have character busts for when people are talking
- I want to have the script for the game written up and finished within the first few days of the jam starting
- I'd like to stick to my schedule as closely as possible!
- Take breaks every so often to avoid burn out and give my brain a rest!
Schedule
I read somewhere that trying to stick to a schedule can help immensely so I've written up what I think my schedule could be for each day (only for the first week or so at the moment), though as the jam hasn't started yet and I don't know how long everything will take it's subject to change...
- Day 1
- Create game project in RPG Maker MV (yay, first steps!) ✔
- Start making character sprites and busts (I'm using the Stella Character Generator so this step shouldn't take longer than the first day to make all needed characters, theoretically) ✔
- Start writing game script document ✔
- Day 2
- Continue writing game script? ✔
- Finish making characters if I haven't already managed to get them all done ✔
- Start planning map layouts ✔
- Day 3
Finish writing script if I haven't already(ON HOLD UNTIL MORE PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE WITH MAPS or I feel like it lol)- More map layout planning ✔
- Start putting together parallax maps ✔
- Day 4 - 5
- Finish parallax maps, including lighting and shadows (giving 2 whole days for this because each map will be like a mini art project, and could take a few hours each time...)
- Day 6
- Start putting events into place for all the objects the player can interact with (no NPCs or cutscenes just yet, purely drawers, decorations, etc, that the player can interact with for flavour text or to find items)
- AFTER the above is done, start eventing the actual gameplay
I think that's a solid plan for now! I'll be able to add and edit it as I go along and get a feel for how long each thing takes me, I have experience using the engine before so I can kind of tell already but each project is different lol. Also, if I finish the schedule for that day quickly I can continue onto the next day to get a head start which will be a good way of making sure I'm ahead of schedule and set to finish in time.