DIRYOW? Day Four -- 8 January 2017
Well, so much for that. I made some progress in terms of actually nailing down the plot, but not much of it translated into words on paper, so hopefully I can make up the difference tomorrow.
I've also got a pretty good idea of how "big" the game is going to be, now:
* around 4 or 5 songs that play in the rhythm engine. I'd really like these to be original compositions rather than third-party assets for two reasons: from a pragmatic perspective, that will make the dynamic elements of the engine much easier to integrate; and from a narrative perspective, these songs are representative of the player character's memories (and will even be playing diegetically in some cases) and I'd like them to be as evocative and well-matched to their locations as possible.
* a few more songs for background music during the RPG segments, which will probably be third-party assets just to save time since they'll be intended to fit very general sorts of settings.
* no more than 15-20 maps for the RPG segment thrown together using third-party assets; these are my lowest priority, since there's not going to be a ton of interaction with the environment, so they'll mostly be static scenery that conveys the location that conversations are taking place.
* about 5 distinct character sprites with several expressions for use with the dialogue system; this is what concerns me the most right now, since I can't draw particularly well at all, but I don't think sprite animations on the map a la Final Fantasy V will suffice to get across the range of emotions I want characters to express.
* a muncha buncha cruncha dialogue
Anyway, here's an amateurish first attempt at one of the game's main themes: https://clyp.it/ic5imkx1
Eventually, it'll be a full-length arrangement for ensemble, but the player will hear several versions throughout the game, including a stripped-down, shortened version like this. (hopefully the final version won't be quite so plinky-plink)
Edit (Days 5/6):
The old brain fog has hit me and goofed things up considerably but I'm still in it to win it and not even too horribly behind schedule yet; more tomorrow, with luck.