Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-10-25

It's the Friday Rambles (in name only). Sorry.

Real Life Stuff

I spent a few days with real life obligations that kept me away from my computer. Things keep coming up. I feel like more things will keep coming up now that we're approaching the holiday seasons. This does not bode well for finishing the extra chapter before the Winter Sale. I'll still do my best, though.

Cleaned my desk a little. Plugged my desk monitor into my Macbook and did lots of writing. Needed a change of scenery i guess. When I use my Macbook I use a different bluetooth mechanical keyboard that makes a different kind of clacking sound . The change adds some novelty to my work and it helps with creativity. Probably.

And then on Friday afternoon I came down with some kind of sickness and went to bed super early and basically slept all of Saturday. I had written most of this post earlier in the week, and was planning on finishing it up on Friday, as usual, but my feeble body refused. This is a good reminder that I should prioritize sleep and rest.

Game Dev Stuff

I wrote a lot of words, during the days I could actually do some work. I played through the game a bit and did a lot of minor revisions, too. I wrote a big chunk of a major side route. It's pretty spoilery so I'm not gonna post anything about it.

I added some "juice" as they call it, to a visual thing that indicates a completed objective. I think it adds a bit of excitement and fun, hopefully in a way that doesn't feel out of place with the rest of the game. Something I'm trying to do now while I'm revising is to inject some more um... "delight". idk. I think I've just been working on this for way too long. My perspective on what is fun is all broken. I'll just have to trust my gut and then hope the playtesters are honest with me. Anyway, here's the base sprite. You'll have to trust me that the visual thing is cool.

I added placeholder sketches for all the art I would need to draw during localization. I really do think the visuals inform my writing. As soon as I drew the placeholder sprites I immediately could just, write dialogue around them. And seeing the dialogue with visuals in game, feels way different than just seeing the script, which is why I immediately have dozens of minor text changes to make every time I do a mini playthrough of the game. Eg:

Also I had issues with my PS5 controller on the Mac (good playtesting) so I upgraded the input library that I hadn't touched since the beginning of EMDND's development, so like, 2 years ago. Dangerous stuff, but luckily it was not a major problem, just minor surgery for changing the configs. And now PS5 controller works fine on Mac. For the 2 people in the entire world who play with that setup.

The End

Well, so much for this week. And so I am going to miss my End of October deadline, and thus my hopes and dreams for releasing this by Steam Winter Sale. Unless localization takes like 2 weeks which it won't. But maybe now that I've come to peace with it, I can take my time and release a better product :-). I should at least release a new version with all the fixes I've put in since the last prod build and Playstation controller support and all that. Anyway, thanks for your support, as always. See you next week!