Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-05-26 (Patreon)

It's the Friday Rambles. A little early today!

I actually got a lot of work done, despite being pretty busy with family and real life stuff. I traveled and did a lot of shopping. Still haven't played the new Zelda.

What gamedev work I was able to get done was mostly focused on JP localization, Mac build, and fixing the stupid effects code, for which I found even more bugs. But now the Mac build is all fixed, and I've also actually gotten the effects code working better overall than it is in the current live version of the game lol... so that's cool and good.

Above: The game running on Mac. I think most of the bugs are fixed. Finally!

I also finally added the borderless windowed fullscreen. The setting is ugly because I had to shove it in there somehow without changing the settings menu layout (which would have been a nightmare to update the code for), but hey, it works...

Above: Whoa, Nelly.

Oh, yeah, I also changed Hana's finale scene so you can hold the fire button to fire repeatedly instead of having to spam it. That can be one of those "undocumented changes" because I feel like that should have been in from the get-go. I also buffed the boss's health a bit to make up for how easy the sequence is to clear now.

I think that's it for the 1.0.7 updates and fixes. I'll release it after a few more days of testing and baking...

Moving on...

Did you see this?

Above: Whoa, Nelly.

Vanripper, a fellow artist and gamedev (who made a game you may or may not have heard of), drew a fanart of Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines!! Look at Tiger-chan getting all frisky, lol.

Anyway this is personally a really big deal for me. Vanripper is an incredibly huge inspiration as an artist (and for whom I've drawn lots of fanart of his characters) and a gamedev sempai (from whom I referenced his Steam page a billion times when I was making my own), so when I saw this my eyes practically popped out of their sockets like a Looney Tunes character, because I really wasn't expecting this at all. Like he drew all the characters! All the details from the game! He got true ending and then he called the game "so inspiring"! Is this... what they call "making it"...?

So now I'm posting it here so you can look at it too. Look at it! Look!

And because Vanripper is Big in Japan, as they say, this renewed interest in a JP version of the game so I had to post that yes, we're working on a JP localization. Man I wish I had one before Vanripper made fanart lol

Segue into JP localization progress here:

Above: Updating all the various parts of the game. Dialogue history looks good. Translation is well underway and the first draft for playtesting and QA should be ready in the coming weeks. Translator-san has been very hard at work... Please... get some rest...

Above: In the meantime I'm working on the UI. This exercise is doubling as Japanese class lol

I think I'm going a bit nuts with this, because I'm told it's probably okay to leave most of the UI in English for most JP players, but I also want the players to have a complete experience. I guess it fits an office comedy setting nicely, though, while leaving the original English is apparently more appropriate in more scifi/actiony style games.  ...On a more selfish level, I personally wanted an excuse to write some Kanas and Kanjis and pretend like I know what I'm doing.

Above: I'm handwriting all of the comic speech bubbles myself... sorry..........

Also chipping away at the CGs that need updated...

Above: Safari no Taiga-chan! Gao!

I'm still surgically moving all the hardcoded strings into a strings file that can be translated, but there are also UI elements that are even more hardcoded (as sprite assets (eg. the action menu and the Tiger-chan comics)) which I'll probably just have to leave as English for the unofficial translation mod support. I could also probably put in some kind of subtitle feature, I guess. Or not. I'll wait for feedback on that front when I'm actually ready for it. For sure, with my next game I'll be starting with the assumption I'll be needing to support localizations and translations from the get go.

And so, I'm still working on this game, 3 weeks after it's out. Not putting in nearly as many hours as I was while I was crunching, but still making good progress! My goal for the JP localization is to have it done before the Steam Visual Novel Fest in August (and it looks like it might be done well before then), so I can do a big ol marketing push. After that I'll probably start real work on the next thing, which I'm honestly very eager to move on to. lol.

Above: Oh yeah, I drew a picture this week too. It was fun doodling something that wasn't a game asset. Will be able to do it more often now. Also people have been telling me that they hate Blythe now, which is great, because that means I did a good job with characterizing her in the game. Maybe in the far future I could give her a tragic backstory in a prequel.

Anyway, I think that's it for this week. Thanks as always for your support!