Day January 11th:
So the thing is, I do a few hours work first thing in the morning, do literally everything else with my day, then another hour or so in the evening before I post the devlog update, so by the time I'm here in this textbox I don't actually remember much of what I've done. Or at least, that's how I feel today.
I did some minor edits to the dialogue and event commands I'd previously coded in. I added in transfer events so the player can travel between the town, the main overworld map, and the second overworld area. I also distinctly remember copying the little town grove map that I made for that opening cutscene (see: Devlog Day 5(?)) and making it so the player can travel back to the area during the day, and talk to the ghost of the murderer they, uh, killed.
Here's some screenshots:
Battle encounters! I spent no longer than half an hour on this because I really don't want this to be a big deal in the game. I recreated the overworld map for this area (I had a previous map made up, but as I've developed the story further I've realized more about where events need to be taking place) and divided it into regions for random encounter battles. I spent no more than a half hour on this because I already know I'm going to be overhauling this entire system when I expand this game after the jam.
I also started working on the map for my second area, which is basically a giant snowfield. I put a bit more thought into creating the main town of the area, so I wouldn't have to use up so many of my limited events on doors. The player will be meeting their second (third?) party member here, who I'm excited to introduce tomorrow.
We're about a week into the jam, so I'm reevaluating my project goals. Unless I take next week off from everything else in my life, I'm definitely not going to meet my original vision for this game. Which I'm not upset about because I knew I was setting a lofty goal, and if I keep up the pace I've been working with (and, fingers crossed, improve) I'll actually be about halfway to my original vision, which is not bad. And, I'll have a completely playable (if short) game, which is way more than I had before this jam started??
I have four main characters I want to be in the game before the jam is over. I won't be able to program in my original ending idea, but I want to include a suggestion of what the original end goal was. In that vein, I want a temporary win condition programmed instead, so that the game still feels complete for potential players. I want the four main areas of the game to have maps drafted, even if they're not fully populated with events or enemies yet. And I want to have my own custom sprites because the more I think about that, the more it bugs me.
Tomorrow I'm going to figure out exactly what the temporary win condition is, and how to implement it. I should also draft the rest of the overworld maps, because those should be relatively quick to do, and start adding events to the snow town map to introduce this next character. This weekend, though, I think I'll focus entirely on creating original character sprites. Those two days are relatively free for me, and I'll get to see how long it takes me to do, and I won't have as many old event pages to update to the new images.