itch.io

SWON AFTERCLASS YAPTIME NOTES:

///underconsrtrucotn

blue period mentioned!!

me when i forgor

SWON Afterclass Yaptime Notes:

***READ ONLY AFTER PLAYING THE GAME***

• this is inspired by my dislike for the DMV unfortunately
• twine is difficult for me because tell me why i spent like 5 hours trying to change the ui to have a sidebar with a menu and being ultimately unsuccessful with it
• all those weird strokes on the very first page?  kinda weird, right?  I'm gonna say that it's an abstract version of the DMV, but it was instead a maze I made because I wanted to make an interactive maze in-game.  I was able to make it interactive, but I couldn't implement it in game because despite everything I did to make the maze smaller, it kept getting cut off the screen, resulting in what you see on the first page
• improvements i wish to implement
• the itch page...I made sure to engage in all the aspects of it (besides screenshots because I don't see how this current version would have any intriguing screenshots for viewers to get hooked to)
  • the embed window is long because the text kept getting cut off...another case of my chronic yapper-ness
• i originally wanted to include an interactive tic-tac-toe and interactive maze, but I couldn't due to time constraints.  i WAS able to figure out how to do these outside the main game file, but, something with the page setup on the main game file/code kept messing up the layout and in the end I had to cut those aspects out because thyyey made absolutely no sense with the layout
• i know that the beginning context section is long - it's longer than the actual gameplay.  while this is due to time constraints, i probably should have focused more on making the gameplay for intriguing and interactive rather than all the build-up towards the gameplay
• i want to make the endings better: i knew i definitely wanted fire, rain, and gaslighting grandma as some of the ending options, but I feel like all the endings were very unsatisfactory
• i would most definitely add images into this game (i want to make book covers for the main three stories)
• for the narritive, it would slowly be revealed that your parents died in a car crash...i didn't quite get that far but...in an improved version it would have that.  yes.
• shu MENTIONED!!!
  • as you may have noticed, this game series is shu-related.  who is shu?  a very cool person
    
  • 书 is written as shū in pinyin, and it is pronounced the same way as shu heheh (the extent of what I learned from a year and a half of chinese classes sob...i need to brush up so I can understand more tea during my walks)

SWON Afterclass Yaptime Notes:

***READ ONLY AFTER PLAYING THE GAME***

• I'm glad the chaotic aspect of the game came across during in-class play testing - the comparison to mischievous fairies was very on point.
• as my first ever game posted to itch, I think this isn't too bad
• despite being a more visual-oriented person, I'm kind of glad this game was only text - it helped me focus more on the narrative rather than trying to speed run the art (something I need to improve on for my art stuff in general)
  
• it's called Shoes-Shows-You instead of Shoes-Show-You (which is more grammatically correct) because while I was making the game, I kept typing the word "shoes" as "shows", so I made the title a constant reminder of that repeated mistake
• improvements I wish to implement
  • I would want to add more depth to help dilute all the loops I made in the game - I really like the concept of loops, but I probably overused it a little in this game
  • of the three colors, I wanted this game to focus 
  • i would make the ending more clear that it was an ending.  even though the ending is just an opposite version of the beginning, I realized after the play test that it isn't the most clear that it is an ending, especially since it loops to the beginning.  i want to figure out a way to make that the absolute ending while still letting it loop to the beginning to people can keep running through the different pathways, but i know that kind of goal is sort of contradictory
• shu MENTIONED!!!
  • as you may have noticed, this game series is shu-related.  who is shu?  a very cool person
    
  • shu is walking the shoes instead of walking the dogs in the game icon
  • mama yamino is an icon

SWON Afterclass Yaptime Notes:

***READ ONLY AFTER PLAYING THE GAME***

I accidentally deleted my entire game description like ten minutes after class ended because I pressed enter on an old "edit game" tab :clown:.  My proof is that my classmates probably saw a longer description during our arcade playtime during class, but I cannot for the life of me remember it at the moment to retype it all.

• the cats were originally humans.  in my head.  however, cats are easier to draw than humans imo.  
• originally, there was a blue chef.  i don't know if you can tell what the blue chef became (hint hint the special extra extra exclusive ingredient LOL) but uh yea this game was about a cannibalistic chef.  
• the more sketchy artstyle IS intentional - i was inspired by that one character from across the spiderverse with the guitar; I remember reading about how the way he was animated being in a bunch of different layers, which helepd make his iconic comic book/scrapbook-like style.  I wanted a similar vibe in that the characters in this would look more like a scrapbook.  
• my greatest failure in making this demo: the sprites
  • the jar and completed Pâte à Choux pastries sprites are SWITCHED... i honestly don't know how that happened because it looks fine in the code
  • as i was turning in this assignment, I added the sprites in as the final step, as I wrote all the code before actually adding in the sprites and backgrounds into the images folder.  AT THIS POINT IN THE GAME DEVELOPMENT, BEFORE I ADDED THE SPRITES, the sprite positions were correct
    • Yoo - this is you.  yoo remains on the left side of the screen the ENTIRE TIME, WITH CHANGING EXPRESSIONS.  however, due to the weird stacking caused by actually adding the sprites into the images file, when I opened the game for arcade time in class, every sprite was stacked in the middle
      • rip the one sprite of Yoo where Yoo is the HUH cat meme (iykyk)
    • Rina - supposed to only be of the right side of the screen when she appears.  obviously, this didn't happen sob
    • Yvette - supposed to only be in the middle of the screen when she appears.  also, after she initially barrels out of the kitchen after delivering ingredients, her sprite doesn't disappear.  this is definitely my fault because I forgot to hide her sprite oops
    • I wonder if anybody noticed that Rina knew about your grandmother without you mentioning her hmmm

• improvements i wish to implement
  • fixing the sprites - i just yapped about the sprites for about 200 words, so uh... ig I would just redraw them in the original human designs I envisioned and maybe add more variety in expressions
  • something I've been contemplating if I ever had (a LOT) more time is creating a live2D idle for the sprites, though, I don't even know if you can upload that type of visual into ren'py as a sprite.  maybe one day...
  • I got feedback to make the dialogue less lengthy, or at least separating the dialogue so it isn't a wall of text, which is so valid (i mean, this yaptime post already is so...wordy)
  • i want to clean up the backgrounds while still maintaining the sketchy aspect, like my stream overlay (I was using procreate for all the visuals of this game instead of my usual in clip studio paint because my wacom, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, would not connect to my laptop sob)
  • Narrative big points: I want to add more hints into Rina's hidden unhinged-ness as a cannibal, and more hints that the blue ribbon chef (her name was Blair) became the special ingredient.  besides adding more content through the actual baking process (which would let you have more conversation with Rina), I wanted there to be breaks in the lessontime where Rina would leave and you would get to "talk" with Yvette, who helps you realize the horror of this cooking class
  • initially, I wanted to have and illustrate the entire baking process, and make more references to the past games in this series (Shoes-shows-You (Demo) and 书 (demo)), mostly in the environment (having the books from 书 on the empty shelves, implementing the parts of Shoes-Shows-You into the design of the chefs...and the jar LOL)
  • i thought we were also supposed to post the game on itch as a downloadable game, not as embedded into the itch page, so I probably need to fix that
  • for the itch page, I wanted the foreground to be the HUH cat version of Yoo as a repeated background, and the background background is just as it is (the kitchen background, but probably the updated better sketch version)
  • I also couldn't figure out how to italicize the text or add the accents to Pâte à Choux in-game.  I literally copy-pasted the italicized text example from the official ren'py page, but it still didn't italicize the text in-game, so i need to figure that out
  • i'm very thankful that we are able to receive feedback in class because holy moly game developing is DIFFICULT...but fun!

• shu MENTIONED!!!
  • as you may have noticed, this game series is shu-related.  who is shu?  a very cool person
  • Pâte à Choux --> Choux --> Choux is pronounced as shoo --> Shoo sounds like Shu --> there we go!
  • as you can see, the kitchen uses the complimentary colors of purple and yellow.  I think of all complimentary color pairs, purple and yellow is my favorite (unrelated to shu's color scheme because I liked it before I knew he existed).  I remember in studio art classes when they asked us to paint still lives using a complimentary color pair and I would take every chance I could to use purple and yellow.  I had to buy new purple and yellow acrylic paints because i kept running out due to my favoritism