Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-09-08 (Patreon)

It's Friday, and it's the Rambles. I'm on time, hopefully. When I started writing this as of right now, it's still Friday. Edit: I was late, sorry

As I talked about last week, I started on a new game idea, and spent this week developing the prototype to see if it has potential as a full-on game.

Above: Cyberpunk Button-Pressing Action

I've made a lot of progress as far as developing the framework the game will be built on. Which doesn't mean there is any meat to the game yet, just that I have the ability to add meat now. I made the window management stuff, a working task bar, timer/flag based event triggering, a phone call contact list and dialing UI, etc etc etc.

Above: (gif) Dial your assigned mentor's extension to start your onboarding, newbie

I'm envisioning the phone call mechanic as a kind of puzzle aspect. The idea is that you find various numbers throughout the game and find new people to talk to. Or guess numbers and find people that way.

Video chat portraits aren't in color or animated yet, but I'll be doing that this week, so I can see various expressions and emotions in action.

Above: (gif) Real time chat, where you can do stuff (like annoy Hana) while a call is going on

There are two different kinds of dialogue - normal vn style where you're focused on the text, and then there is dialogue that happens while you interact with your environment. Generally it will happen while the person you're in a call with is waiting for you to do something.

Above: And of course, dialogue choices. Don't say the wrong thing...

Branching will happen based on your actions and words. As per usual (or as usual you can get with one previous game)

Above: (gif) Certain situations will trigger calls or other events, like being bad at your one job

Incoming calls will happen based on story events and so on. Depends on who you've met and what you've done.

Above: (gif) The EOD Report summarizes your day and reminds you about what you did and didn't do. 

The story takes place through "days", each day consisting of a series of things you need to do (or not) to make it through the day. I'm also going to add a todo list for the main things you need to do each day to be a good little employee. Of course, you can also do stuff that's not on there. If you're feeling adventurous.

Above: Game over, man

Well, that's mostly what I have for now. Now that I have a bit of a framework I can build on top of, I can add actual story and game. I do think this prototype has potential. I'm gonna spend another week on it. At least building this has been fun, because having learned a lot from my first game, I was able to organize my code in a way that adding something new mostly Just Works instead of it being a nightmare journey through spaghetti every time I want to change something.

My main concerns before deciding to continue or not is:

• - Is this fun to play (so far I think there's good potential here. Maybe. If I execute it right)
• - Does it look good (I'm concerned here, because EMDND was like a wonderful and colorful comic that immediately catches the eye (and is familiar for my followers), but here it's like, umm... old productivity software aesthetic)

For the first bullet, I'm trying to think of a funny and cool cast of characters that people will enjoy meeting and interacting with, along with an interesting and engaging overarching storyline(s). For the second bullet, I might have to make the chat portraits bigger, or draw fun and cute anime pictures you can set your in-game wallpaper to so the screenshots are catchy. For marketing. I gotta make money, you know?

In other rambles, I need to hurry up and make a Cirno Day drawing tonight. I've done one every year for the past something years, so I must continue the tradition.

Anyway, see you next week! Hopefully I'll have lots of game dev updates to ramble about.

Thanks for the support, as always!