itch.io

FIVE HOURS TO GO

comin in down the wire, the demo's gonna be a reaaallly basic twine mock up, but we will have SOMETHING

day well this got away from me

things ive learned: summer =/= productive. i'm basically useless for a good third of the day b/c of the heat.

progress update: i've been chipping away at the writing - mar and i are gonna hang tomorrow and put together a plan for visuals etc for the final week of the jam. not sure what our finished product/jam demo is gonna be at the point, but i'm tryin to keep it chill. i've been looking at ren'py as another possibility but we'll probs work with twine for the jam at least.

day 4

so far today i finished up the outline in twine

it ended up being a little less heavy/a bit more magic & goofy romance than we originally figured but honestly its more fun that way imo~ gonna work out how the key visuals should work / what actual text we need the rest of the day.

also some of mars drawings of our main chars~

day three

ended up scrapping the original idea, taking the day to rest, and starting fresh this morning! similar themes, but much fresher. gonna try to finish up the whole outline in twine - we're approaching it as a 'choose yr own adventure' sort of dealio.

i'm feeling much better about this one!

hehe thanks j! is this day one or two. two.

days one+two

yesterday we hung out and revamped some of our ideas for the mechanic since we hadn't looked at any of our old notes in ohhhh maybe 8 months lol. right now i'm focusing on writing/outlining, mar will start visuals once we have some concrete stuff.

today is writing/planning/outlining today, hoping for a solid outline by the end of the day.

going a little slow 'cus i'm crampy as hell and all i wanna do is curl up in bed lmao

those lil floral hoodies r givin me life rn...

intro

hey, all, my name is e, this is my second time participating in mfgj! last time around i made a small demo in adventure game studio. i'm a comic artist, i have a webcomic you can read here & i have some comics and another twine game on my itch.io as well!

this time around i'm making a game with my roommate, mar julia. we've actually been pitching the idea for this game around since last summer, but we havent had an opportunity to do much with it yet. we want to work with elements of visual novel games & point and click adventures (hence why i was fooling with ags before).

game stuff

so like i said - elements of p&c, visual novels. i'm in charge of writing/coding, mar is in charge of visdev & art assets.

we're working with magical realism, anxiety disorder, the liminal space in not-so-close friendships, the impact of choice.

this time around, i'm gonna stick with twine instead of trying to learn a new engine - i want to see how much i can push the limits of what twine can do in terms of visuals & gameplay. for the jam, the goal is to have the entire structure of the game more or less 'sketched out' (written/mapped out) as well as a playable demo, but we'll see!

mar's gonna be posting in here as well, like last time i'm just gonna run my devlog supes casually and just keep a record of daily goals & what was achieved.

cheers~

oh neat, thank you!! ^w^ good luck to you too!

1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?

yo, i'm e (they/them pronouns). i'm a comic artist (i have a webcomic you can read here) and im sleepy.

2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?

yep! last time i made something in uhh adventure game studio and while it was fun to learn a new program it ended up being really clunky and not useful.. i'm proud of what i made anyway! this time round i'm actually working with my roommate and my goal is to get the structure of our game set & find an actual, viable engine.

3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?

the persona series, harvest moon, we know the devil, SVBBVT, etc. i made my first twines bc of SVBBVT and works by anna anthropy/aevee bee/ohnoproblems etc. this particular game was def inspired by wtkd in the sense its whats inspired us to make sth as well.

4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?

twine stuff & ags for the last jam.

5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!

uhhh. pet care (i used to work in a pet shop). comics. idk lmao

day..i dont know anymore

well here we go, working on code. got the conditional conversation thing to work! now gotta set up the first character switch, so..back to assets. 6__9

goals, tho:

*finish off VT's room entirely (all objects, hotspots, etc)

*get CT's room running (hotspots, dialog etc)

*update the save/load game GUIs

if i have time:

look into a new font / see about positioning the sierra dialogue GUI differently

weeps i got so mad fighting with code today i gave up and worked on assets instead.

day sevenish

made a bunch of objects and added them in!!! i dont know why AGS transparency settings hate me so much!!! ill fix the weird stray pixels if i have time but, well, this isn't gonna be polished anyway.

the picture on the desk:

i also coded the cursor to automatically change over the correct hotspots!!

now confession time, here's what i've got: i have no script so i'm kind of winging the dialogue off a vague outline i made, so this will be an interesting few days. good news is i'm off tomorrow so i can work pretty nonstop on fixing my coding issues haha

day ..six technically but eight in reality

a little warmup i did of my favorite gays

talk sprites! i'm going with a sierra-style of dialogue (although the lucas arts is cute, too, but im a sucker for talksprites) ideally the image will change depending on whose talking but we'll see if i have time to draw them again~

and baby's first dialog!

i want to customize the GUI to center/make the text less jarring but, progress!!

this is a good post idea :3c

i feel like ive been thwarted a bit by pre-existing plans/my work schedule/some general mental illness fugue i've been pushing thru, but i'm working on being content with what i have done. that said! it's so cool to start to see things come together - i set baby goals for myself because i knew what my limits were, and i think i'm still on track to meet them, and the main thing is i got to get a feel for an adventure engine, even if its not the one i want to use for my non-jam game i think.

anyway now i'm back and ready to throw myself in hard for the next five - six? days!

day 5

i'm gonna be out of state for two days starting tomorrow, so i'm trying to knock some key stuff out tonight!

i need to figure out what's up with the resolution b/c everything is set to be 640x480 but it runs about 2x as large on my computer screen.

well this gif is big but!! progress!!

i'm too sleepy to tackle the conversation thingy... here's my list of tasks

*figure out how to get popup modal statusline

*set up conversation - are silent protags possible?

*make views for the conversation GUI

*set isolation tank as save point

*basic task - CTB becomes playable after CTY conversation option

day 4

we are going to very politely ignore the blue halo around everyone at the moment because editing these sprites is like my lowest priority atm

but everyone's in place for VT's room!!

i..gotta set up my title screen and cursors and things so i'm gonna do that. i think in terms of this jam my main goal for finishing is to set up VT's room and the first character switch...if i can get further, cool, but MOSTLY I JUST WANT TO MASTER BASIC AGS FUNCTIONS HAHA

i also made the cursor assets but idk if i like them or not we'll see!!

bed for now

haha thank you!!

and YEAH so originally these gals were just gijinkas of betta fish from my store b/c i want to set up a sorority tank..someday...but i dont have the time/funds/space for it rn. i'm gonna have to sneak an actual definition of a sorority tank in there somewhere

as for illict handholding well here's a bunch of pre-jam drawings :3c :3c

day 3

my work schedule messed up my jam schedule :(

gonna try to get as many assets as i can done tonight as i spent last night mostly taking a lot of notes on scripting in AGS. still trying to decide how i can code this baby easiest and fastest for me, haha.

jeez gyazo that gif is low quality

oh i came up with an actual title!!! so thats cool.

(i have to get up at 5 am technically but...we'll see)

10:13pm (softly) my children

hruugh i'm gonna call it a night i think. as delightful as pulling an all nighter sounds i dont have it in me anymore.

tomorrow:

*FINALIZE BACKGROUND IMG

*EDIT SPRITE

*GET CHARACTERS PUT IN/ADD DIALOGUE

*SEE HOW FAR WE CAN GET WITH VT'S ROOM

day 2 part one

get placeholder imgs for the objects/other characters locked down

go ahead and replace the cursor images bc they ugly af

but first, lunch break

your sprites are so cute!!!!! and i love the concept ahh this is exciting

day 1:

mostly still figuring out the story elements and messing around w ags at this point!

technically day 2 but still counting as day 1 in my book, sue me:

finally settled on a basic premise, scripting/rough outlining started. tomorrow goal: VT's animation loop, rough background pass, cohesive outline (look into controlling sequence of events?)

ah im trying to keep it simple, i think!

• learn the basics of ags/the mechanics of point and click style games
• see how quickly and thoroughly i can develop a story
• challenge how i usually go about storytelling as a comic artist
• see how much i can reasonably complete in a 2 week period!

haha thank you!! and YES thats definitely a big influence, like i've always been in to mundane magic but seeing it realised so well is such a good like - source of inspiration for sure :3c

yo! i'm e. this is technically not the first game ive ever made, i made a little twine game last year for my creative writing thesis (u can play it here!), but i wanted to try to make something a little more complicated. this devlog is gonna be kind of bare bones for right now but i wanted to keep my thoughts organized. anyway. i'll be trying out adventure game studio!

concepts /

• self contained - single environment - fluid environment? - something like a sleepover
• character relationships - each prsn triggers a scene/convo - convos as 'boss battles'/challenges to overcome
• 'mundane magic' kinda feeling the idea of having everyone be magical girls/superheroes but only ever have it referenced in passing?
• what can we do w/an adventure/point and click mechanic
• // there was always someone in my friend group who was sort of on the 'outs', who we were super eager to cast aside and ostracize. friend groups are very fickle.
• have which character you control change depending on who you talk to at what time (tbh..think homestuck act 6 haha)

assets /

working off my betta girl character designs

very very rough notes

HM teal- the unambigous leader of the group, even if she genuinely doesn't give a shit about anything.

RT - HM's right hand, protective and messy and a little bit mean.

VT - easily distractable, easily put off

CT blue - vice leader. sometimes it seems like she doesn't care, either, but she's the most sincere of the group.

CT yellow - the weakest link, but she tries the hardest.

HM grey - her lack of interest compensates for the CT's over-sincerity, but she always does her share of the work without question.

still in the process of figuring out everything else.