Cards of Gluttony Mini Dev Log #16.5 [26/06/2024] (Patreon)

Hello everybody! Unfortunately this development log will be quite short as I have some slightly bad news.

What's up with me

For the past month, I've been sick with some sort of flu that caused me to be bedridden for about half of it, and left me quite exhausted during the latter half. I have thankfully gotten better now, although I seem to still have quite an annoying lingering cough.

Because of this, I have gotten virtually zero work done on the game during June, with me slowly getting back into it this week. And so I would like to apologize to you, as the next update which I originally planned for around this time will have to be postponed until next month.

... it also means I have barely anything to show you today as I haven't gotten to work on the game at all. There are however a few tidbits that I was working on before my untimely shutdown, as well as a bit of music I worked on earlier this week.

And to cap off this life update, I am done with university and am officially a bachelor as of now! That means I will have a whole lot more free time now, which I plan on putting into the game as I shift into full focus on development during summer.

Currently, thanks to all your support, the income I get from the game's Patreon is enough for me to make a living solely based on the game. And so, if things keep going the way they are, I'll be able to work on the game full-time for at least the near future, so thank you everyone for making this happen!

And with that sappy stuff out of the way, we can get into the little work I had gotten done, starting with...

More Music

In the previous log, I went into more detail about the music in the game, and how I hadn't touched it until recently. I shared a demo of the new battle music that will be used during "boss" encounters. However, the current battle music consists of 3 escalating versions of the song, which correspond to about a third of each person's Wgt. The version I shared was, of course, the final 3rd climax. Today I'd like to share with you the opening version that plays from 0-20Wgt, it's in the attachments, so give it a listen!

Next up, the previous log also talked about the the overworld music, which is realistically the music the player will hear for most of the game, which means it gets repetitive quite quickly. I have finally sat down and composed something I'm happy with, so you can expect a bit more variety in the next update! You can once again listen to in the attachments! On a more musical note, you can hear I've used the same melody from the battle music in the second half of the demo, as a leitmotif of sorts. I hope to sneak it into more future music to make the OST feel a bit more unified, so you can look forward to that!

But this brings up another question: how will the game switch between playing this song and the existing overworld music? Currently there are two options:

• Based on the player's Wgt

• Based on the game's calendar

In the first option, taking a route similar to the battle music, the music could be split in half across the Wgt range. This could be quite a nice bit of feedback, for example one could easily tell they have crossed the 20Wgt range when they hear the music change.

The second option would for example change the music at the beginning of each month, with one song playing during odd months, and the other during even. Perhaps in the future, once 2 more tracks are composed, 4 tracks could then be split across the year according to seasons. This approach could be quite a nice way to signify the passing of time, perhaps get you excited to see what you'll get up to during this new month.

Currently I'm more inclined towards the second option, as it is more likely to consistently play each song for a longer period of time. The problem with basing the music on Wgt is that it would likely fluctuate a lot and change sporadically, not to mention: depending on the playstyle of the player, some would never even get to hear one of the songs if they are for example used to always staying above a certain Wgt threshold. Perhaps you are one such player, so feel free to share any thoughts on this if you have any!

And the one tiny other thing I've done

This one is quite inconsequential to all of you really, as all I've done is update the game's icon:

(There it is!)

This one is just a small thing, really: the existing icon is something I whipped up quickly so the game would at the very least have some kind of icon, so it was about time for a change! As you can see, it's the Stout Group badge!

This should also affect the Android app icon and make it all nice and spiffy now, since the current app icon is a fallback of a very badly placed logo of the game with text flowing outside the icon, not to mention the logo isn't even centered!

That's all folks

As I said at the beginning, this log is a bit disappointing as I haven't been able to work on the game at all. I'd like to apologize one more time for the delay and lack of progress. Now that I've mostly recovered, I'll try to catch up the best I can!

And with that: thank you for your patience, thank you for reading and thank you for supporting the project!