Week 4 Update
I’m grateful to my past self for deciding to have a Trello board for each week of the jam. I sat down today thinking I had accomplished very little, especially since I struggled with art in the latter half of the week. However, when I looked at my Trello, I realized I actually completed what I planned to. I finished the logic for hovering over rooms (though I still need to adjust the pivot point of the sprites) and moved errand triggers inside the rooms. Additionally, the close button logic is already in place.
I also have a draft of the main game loop logic on my blackboard, and I will focus on coding this next. I plan to measure in-game time by the number of tasks completed, change the rooms' appearance accordingly, and spawn new tasks.
The second coding challenge this week will be creating the first mini-game. It won't be anything innovative, as it will be based on the 15 puzzle but with an image. This will give me the opportunity to tell a story through the pictures.
As for art, I created a sketch of the apartment rooms on paper (I’m not satisfied with the proportions of the current sprites).
I gathered tons of reference images and made some decisions on style: I won't use outlines, I’ll keep my color palette small, and I’ll avoid using gradients much. Unfortunately, I made zero progress on character design. :( I decided to take a break and focus on completing an entire Inkscape course next week.
Next update on Sunday! I can not wait as in July I'm starting a long leave at my job and I can shift all my focus to this project.