Soul's Post-Mortem
Man...it's certainly been one hell of a journey. I think in retrospect, we could've reduced our scope a bit, but we did just about manage to get it done in time. That's worth celebrating, right?
Anyways, I'm going to keep this short, since you can see a lot of the dev troubles by looking over the previous log. Hope that's okay!
The Stuff That Went Right
Having never done actual games development before, I wasn't entirely sure how much I would like it. Overall, though, I definitely had fun, and I think Aera did, too ^^
GitHub
Aera showed me how to use GitHub early on, and I swear, there's no way we would've released on time without it. Definitely recommended for others in game dev!
The Writing
I figure you're always the worst critic of your own work, but still, I'd say I'm pretty proud of what I did with the writing. It's nothing too mind-blowing, but I think it has some good funny moments, and the novelty of the plot might help carry it for some people. I wish I had time to add a few more scenes, but now the jam's over, I can do that at my leisure :>
The Art
I have some major self-confidence issues when it comes to my art, but I was surprised at my own ability to consistently pump out the art we needed. Aera did some of the item sprites and such too (I can't take all the credit), but I'll give myself a pat on the back for pushing my way through it.
The Coding (Mostly)
I think it was pretty few and far between that Aera had trouble with the code—anything that came up he tended to work out pretty fast. I'll leave him to detail that part, though ^^
The Stuff That Went Wrong
Scope
Realistically, I think it would have been more sensible to cut one of the dungeons, or maybe even two of them. As it stands, we were really cutting it close...
Music
I really wasn't expecting this one, but getting the music to work right was a pain in the ass. The actual tracks were fine (I'd planned to use PeriTune from the beginning), but Ren'Pys method of managing audio is really, really odd. When I was trying to implement quieter music during dialogue in the dungeons, I really wanted to rip my hair out.
Pixel Art
The main VN art is...okay, but I think my own pixel art could use a lot of practice. I mean, sure, this is my first time doing any major bit of pixel art ever, but I'm still not really happy with what I came up with. I'll be working on replacing some of the jankier sprites when I can.
Whenever I Had to Do Any Coding
Also known as 'Soul breaks something, then cries to Aera about how broken it is'. Oops!
Closing Comments
It's been a great experience taking part in this jam, and I think I owe that to the community! Everyone has been awfully sweet, and I'm really looking forward to playing everyone's games.
And uh, for anyone who's been following this dev log in earnest, thank you so very much. Your comments have really given me the motivation to keep going ^^
Anyway, that's about all from me, at least for now. Take care!
- Soulwithlife