Liturgy is going to be a Visual Novel made in Ren'py! This is my first time making a game, not to mention my first time working in Ren'py, so I'm excited to learn and see what I can do.

Liturgy is a fantasy game where you play as a young acolyte on a journey exploring the different places of worship in a certain area, a tradition to place trainees in the service of the deities they find a kinship with or have an interest in. Perhaps you'll decide to settle in the hall of the World-Eater, or perhaps find fulfillment in the court of the Phoenix. But you'll never know unless you go.

Gameplay
As a Visual Novel, the main mode of 'gameplay' is reading and making choices. The idea is that in each location, you'll find the major deity you have come to learn about and have 3 to 4 actions to run through the entirety of your visit, with a final event to close it. In these events, you'll learn more about that major/main deity, learn more about the location, participate in certain happenings, or even find minor/hidden deities that are still worshipped. After the final event of the location, you'll be given a choice to make: settle here, or move on. You won't have time or the ability to explore everything fully in one visit, because of the random events I will throw at you.

I tried sketching my idea for a display, and ended up with this idea. I might tweak it, especially if I can't get it to work in Ren'py.

I'll be making the assets myself, but I don't think there will be sound in this particular VN. Maybe sound effects, but no songs. Scope, yanno?

Plans

We have two weeks, and within those two weeks, between work, I'll have to have:
Visual Art: The Acolyte Expressions (DONE), Backgrounds (THUMBNAILED), Choice Backings styled as cards (IDEA ONLY), NPCs (IDEA ONLY)
Written Word: 0% Done, 100% Outlined
Programming: None Whatsoever, 0%

I want to have all the art assets, or at least one location's worth of assets done before I touch Ren'py and play around with layouts.

Whew, that's a lot to do, but I'm here to have fun and see what we can do! 

Art progress!

I've finished the basic expressions of the acolyte. I'm sticking to these basic ones, to not bog down the development as much.

Speaking of assets, I've decided to keep the colors monochrome, to keep the workload down. Looking at my outline, I have about 5 major deities with their own locations, 4-5 minor/hidden deities, and 2 traveling deities. I'm thinking, to keep the workload down, I should think about the minor deities not having a full background of their own, but maybe a 'cutout' style image to layer over the main background of the location.

Speaking of backgrounds, I was able to thumbnail a few ideas yesterday in my sketchbook. I'll be referencing these while preparing the assets to place in the game.

A weakness of mine is taking a long time when I do digital art, but I can pump out traditional art with a good, soft pencil quite fast. And even faster when I don't have to worry about colors. So I was able to finish the main background of a traveling deity.

Traveling deities are encounters that I'll set to random chance. Perhaps while moving between locations, you might have their events fire, but on other runs you might not have that luck. There are two I have planned for this game. But without further ado, I introduce the Hunt.

Progress:
Visual Art: The Acolyte Expressions (DONE), Backgrounds (2/10), NPCs (THUMBNAILING), Choice Backings styled as cards (IDEA ONLY), 
Written Word: 0% Done, 100% Outlined
Programming: None Whatsoever, 0%

oh wow I love your art style! this is also such a cool concept, I'm really excited to see where this project goes!

oooo! the acolyte is so cute :0 this is a really cool idea too, it's definitely on my list to play when the jam finishes!

Day 4: HEAT

The heat really sapped the energy from me at work, so I didn't get any art assets done. I was able to bang out about 2 'events' in writing however. Tomorrow seems like it'll be another hot day, so there will be more writing and possibly a start in Ren''py.

A snippet of an introduction to the first location you travel to, after the introductory segments:

Here you can see how your mountains have stolen the clouds from this sky. A vast expanse of blue, almost endless, and without a wisp. Beneath your wings, you see grasslands, with copses of thick-bodied trees with wax-covered leaves. Sometimes you catch sight of herds in the distance.

This is Verdan, and its cities lie to the west, close, but not too close, to the capricious rivers that flow from high peaks. But that is not your destination, and the deities who lie there are not the ones your path will bring you to.

The path you’d chosen leads you north, where the lush green grasses grow yellow and red under the sun’s wakeful eye. Towards a compound that sprawls across the landscape, even peppering the sides of the neighboring mountain. Bound by low walls that only seem to note its boundaries instead of keeping anything out, the Indolent Sun’s Archives welcomes you.

Day 5: Ren'py at last!

Day 5 and I said to myself, Okay, time to dip into Ren'py and get everything set up so you can just put all the assets in and copy/paste the script in. So after reading the documentation, watching a couple videos, I opened it up.

....and immediately got my bean freaked. I'm very new to coding and to Python in general, so it was very daunting. The built-in notes and tutorial in the engine really helped me get a handle on what to do and what things are. I did struggle a bit with my images and how to put a side image in, but I found a video that helped with that really quickly.

And it was only after trying to put in my backgrounds and sprites that I realized: ah, I have the image sizes all wrong. I had to have background images that fit in 1280 x 720 instead of the ones I had before. So I went back into the image files and fiddled around with resizing them to make them fit. No problem.

But then I looked back at my game and I remembered I wanted the image to appear 'above' or higher than the text box, so as to not be covered up by it. Now how would I do that? I was recommended fiddling around with layers, but I was hesitant to mess with those, since they can also mess with how menus look. I don't know how much menu work I'll have in Liturgy but better safe than sorry, right?

So I decided to try and treat the backgrounds as 'character sprites' as in the ones that appear in the middle of the screen, above a background. I made a black background 1280 x 720 and loaded it into the game. Then I took the height of the text box and laid that over the image files in Clip Studio Paint. After that, it was resizing and ratio-ing the images until they looked okay. Luckily I only had to do that for 4. Going forward, I know better what to look out for and how to format the images in the first place.

I could even put an actual character sprite over the makeshift background like so:

Don't pay any attention to the placeholder that came preloaded with Ren'py, though the contrast made me laugh.

The last thing for the day was to move around the side image of the acolyte's head. If you look at day 1 of this log, I wanted the image to be poking out of the text box instead of within. So I tried editing the .rpy file the best I could.

I kinda like it, but am unsure whether or not to stick with it. I feel like it helps disrupt that sharp line between textbox and 'background,' and puts the acolyte  more subtly involved in the scene rather than separately.

Day: I lost count. What day number is this? 6? 5? Anyways, 9 more days to go!

I did more writing today. Finished another picture. I'm probably not going to be able to fully finish the game, which is to be expected!

But I will be able to at least get the introduction and the first one or two locations out. That's the goal, anyways. Even if I get one out, it'll be a good thing! I can always continue to update after the jam.

I finished writing the segments for the first location: the Indolent Sun's Archives!

Of course, I did all the art for later locations, but I'll have to take care of the Archives' backgrounds next, haha.

Long Weekend Update: One week or so to go!

I can say that ALL core art is done for Liturgy! In total, I have 11 backgrounds, and 6 'event' images. I decided against NPC artwork, not enough time you know? Maybe I'll do an update to add them in later.

Now I focus on writing!

But for the update here, I'll leave with images you'll find in the beginning of the game:

Coming up to the last days of the jam!

I'm zooming along, writing the intro. I worked so hard on getting the assets ready so I can keep working after the jam to update this game that I forgot about needing an intro! So that's what I've been doing.

I've also been fighting with my meager coding knowledge and scrolling through the Lemmasoft forums to see if I can cobble together a code that can do the things I want. It's been a real learning experience, that's for sure.

So here's what I got:

It took a day or so for me to finally make these options non-repeatable. It turns out, my variables weren't global! They were local to a labeled block, so whatever I did with them, they wouldn't do anything.

A sneak peek at the first location! It and possibly a side location will be the only ones available when the jam ends, but I'm highly motivated to keep working at it. I knew that after the jam my art output would really suffer, so that's why I spent the first week or so doing a whole lot of it that won't even make it into the game at launch! Haha, oh well.

Jam Day: 

It's out! It's out, it's out!  There was a hiccup with coding the random menus, but I decided to scrap them for less stress on my end.

But it's out!

You can download it here.