[Hello, everyone, I'm back!]

Hello, everyone, I'm back!

So, it's been a while. I gave up on this project for some time, things weren't going forward as I wanted, partly because revshare - which is basically working for free until the game is out - isn't really motivating to people whose idea is not being made, partly because I was lacking experience to lead the development process of this. So yeah, I put Octavia on pause for two long years, but I haven't stopped evolving as a gamedev; I did some jams (and won a few!), including some with the infamous Juju Adams, got involved in some bigger projects, like BomBear and Don't Sink! I also evolved a lot as an artist, I developped my style and got around to buying a tablet, so now I can actually do digital art and can stop pixeling with a mouse, haha.

Anyway, cutting off the bragging part, I got around to a great team in the GameMaker subreddit discord server, which I made Don't Sink with and with the launch of the game, we were looking forward to our next game. And since I'm graduating this year and I have to make a graduation project too, I got back to this little game, and I'll try to document it here both for my project and for marketing, haha. So introducing the guys here, the lead programmer is the illustrious Seabass and the musician is the magnificent Topherlicious. So, I'm trying to do this game right, so I started with a GDD and passed it through the boys, then some moodboards, and now I'm back to conceptualizing environments.

So, just a reminder for anyone here who don't know anything about this game and doesn't want to go to the first page to read it - and I admit it needs some updating - Octavia will be an RPG that tries to tackle with the feeling of creative mediocrity, which I feel is something we all felt sometimes in our lives, the feeling that our work isn't bad, but it isn't remarkable. The gameplay will be somewhat like The Escapists with Yandere Simulator, but randomly generated, more on that later on. Anyway, here is some work I did for the corridors of the college so far, in digital art. I'll have Seabass post it here about the actual coding and programming part soon, but that's it so far! Good luck us!


Here are some options and variations for walls and tiles.


And here are some arches and columns.

I love the statues, the interface, animations, everything! The humans are hot too ♥
juju is a beautiful and independent pug

Thanks, Maruki! ♥

Sorry for the disappearance trick, guys. We had some problems, Pepper ended up giving up on the project and we had to look for another programmer. I started looking through my friends, and no one was available, so I started looking on reddit and forums, until I found Diego, of GammaLateral. He has already published some games, so that's a good sign. We had to redo most of the code, but the movimentation part of the game is finally done, we have doors, stairs, running... I only need to finish some sprites and polish anothers. Meanwhile, Diego will be developping the composition part of the game. Here is a gif for you guys showing some animation and stairs action!


You can stop and turn at stairs, you'll also be able to run on them.

I LOOOOVE the new art, and I've read the whole log. It's cleaner, sharper, the forms and colors are way better and they send a message.

The second one looks the best to me, it blends naturally.

[@throwaway]

@throwaway
Haha, it's supposed to look crazy and quirky, so I suppose it's good :D

@Kersei
Owwwn, thanks, Rafa ♥


Stones are now real.

And I'm oficcially on vacation now, so things will be going a bit faster here
Also, we rethinked some things and the walking and moving of the game will be more of a top-down, mechanically speaking, though most of the map will be corridors and stuff. So that's it, just updating it here and hopefully next post will be about composing or dialogs.

ＨＥＲＥ ＣＯＭＥＳ ＤＡＴ ＢＯＩ

Looking good ♥

[@Xárene]

@Xárene
Yes, the tree will be in the game and will be a location you can go to, but I'll probably give it some visual updates, since my style has changed a little bit
Unless you're talking about the top-down game with the black figure and antlers, that is a whole other story.

Some updates on the visuals and assets for you guys, been testing how I'll display the dialogue too. I'm not currently working on the shadows and lighting 'cause I'm really not sure how we'll program them, but I want lots and lots of light rays, cast shadows and all the good stuff (btw you can totally click the thumbnails to see the image bigger).


I'm such a weeb.


Those stones are totally not done, but I wanted to show you guys SOMETHING to prove we're not ded.

Fugly bear is my husbando ♥

[@io3 creations]

@io3 creations
Shhh, that's a secret!

@fuzzgoddess
Thanks, goddess, that's so sweet coming from you, I love your designs ♥


Sorry about the hyatus, guys, the college semester is getting closer and closer, and our finals are just around the riverbend - Pepper's final exams and my final projects - we are just really overwhelmed and busy, haha, but we didn't stop the development. Pepper is dealing with doors and rooms right now and I did some more animations and now I'm taking a break from animating, haha, and doing some more assets, so the game at least looks playable. There'll be some more fine tuning, but here's what I've been coming up with:


Harry, are you there?

You finally posted it here! Hooray!
The game is looking great, there's so much done already that I didn't know (or better, I didn't stalk enough)
Keep going

Those shadows are co beautiful, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

I'm loving your art, sweetheart. Keep going

Hey, just wanted to say that I like exploration-based games with cool characters, pixel art, and slightly odd/somber settings and color schemes, so I'm looking forward to see where you take Octavia! I also like school sims. Maybe this is too soon to ask, but will there be dating/friendship sim elements with other characters?

Thank you, waru! There WILL be friendship sim elements with other characters, yes, you can also be enemies with some, but I don't think you'll be able to date them. Maybe if we get a kickstarter going and people want as a stretch goal? But initially, no doki doki.


In other news, Pepper's been optimizing the staircases codes, which she swears to me are beautiful and small, and she's been working on ladders too! I've been lagging behind, though, because of college projects - which I've already presented, at least most of them - and because I've been preparing material for ezolhof to start composing of, but that's almost done too, so the art will have updates soon too. And here's a gif for you guys ♥


This is how Pepper tells me to hurry up with the animations.

I love this devlog so fucking much

Yes, I agree, you definitively don't need all the poses and I wouldn't recommend it either because as you said responsiveness is more important. Looking back at the image I played around with, it's not really how I would do it in a game (way too slow) so sorry, that might have been a bit confusing . The straightening of the body was what I wanted to show. My point was really that some poses are more important to represent when you're working with a limited amount. You can do a lot with a little so no need to add a bunch of poses just because they're on a chart I showed.

Anyway, I hope that helped! Animation is really fun so keep at it!

Haha, you did help! And no worries, I was already figuring out how I would make the jump look natural, you only gave me food for thoughts :D

Love the look and sound of it so far - you said that the game will center around music/composition, but you didn't mention sound/music at all so far? (Unless I missed it). Though I understand content creation comes first - do you have plans for the OST, and how you are going to incorporate music into gameplay elements?

Hi, Pixel! Thank you so much. And yes, I haven't mentioned it yet because, well, we are working on the "moving the player around" part. Unfortunately, me and Pepper are on college and very busy, so the game will advance bit by bit, but don't worry, the next part we planned to develop is the music one. I already planned most of it for the composition puzzles. And I intend to make the music non static, that means that the music will change as you play the game, so, if you play the game two times, two different ways, the music will be different. But we'll need to look more into that. I also plan music to be a big part of the game, after all, you are in the greatest music university, I want everything to feel alive, visually and musically.

This looks further along than 0%. I like the idle animations.

Hello, Ready! Haha, thanks, it seems quite a lot of people liked that animation, that's good. And well, I do agree it's further along than 0%, but I'm completely sure we're under 10% too, so, I'd rather change to 10% only when we're past that mark. We pretty much only got a WALKING AND STAIRS SIMULATOR™ with cute animations till now, which is not the core mechanic. But at least we appear cool

This looks so cool! Great work so far. Looking forward to seeing your project progress!

Thank you, Tracey! I'm really glad you liked it ♥

Looks cute! I would recommend you to lower gravity just a little bit.

Hi, Nae (I'm gonna call you that from now on)! I'll make sure to tell Pepper about your suggestion, and thanks for the cute.


So, guys, I've been meaning to tell you this before, but I was making sure it was 100% confirmed. On the first day I posted this devlog, I got a private message from ezolhof, a very talented, dedicated and professional musician and sound designer. He approached me offering help in Octavia, cause he really enjoyed the idea and visuals, and on the last days I've been putting him up to date on what foot we're on, what we have planned already, the characters, the story, and I'm giving him lots of freedom to open up his wings and make Octavia his game as much as it's mine and Pepper's. Anyway, here's his soundcloud. And with him, we've got a full Brazilian Team! HUEHUE BRBR I guess? He'll be posting here sooner or later.

Anyway, this week is proving to be really busy and stressful on college, lots and lots of project, but I'm closing on finishing the separate pieces of the students sprites. Pepper's already starting to work on ladders, and I'm also preparing a document with insights, references and general briefing about the music, so Ezolhoff can start his part too. Anyway, here's a gif for you guys showing variating a hair can be, so you won't think we did nothing meantime.


Some combinations look weird, but I'll have Pepper cross them out on the programming.

Oh my fucking god

[did]

Looking great so far! The image in the OP is beautiful, and I'm a big fan of the character so far. Was Miyazaki an influence at all here?

Thanks for the compliment, Coffe! Well, I do like his work a lot and watched a bunch of his movies, so he is definitely on my visual library, but he wasn't one of my direct influences on this work for designing anything. But I did get influenced by a bunch of pixel artists on the internet to get to this point, so maybe some of them had a more direct link to him? Haha.

I like the look and style of the art, it feels pretty distinct. Animation could use some work in a few spots. The jump sprites look a bit awkward and I hardly notice that there are two different sprites. The problem is it goes directly into a crouchy/mid-air pose. I feel the actual jump or "push" is more important to represent. That means when you're moving up, the body should be stretched out and straight or slightly curved back since you've just pushed off the ground. Your current fall sprite is like a cross between mid-air and falling, which is fine and I think it'll work. But yeah, switching the "jump up" sprite to something less crouchy would look better and less stiff.

Hello, Silkworm, and thanks a lot for the compliment and for the reference! I'm really not any good at animating, and what I do, I do watching tutorials, references and spritesheets. But for this one I do have a good explanation, haha! As you can see, Octavia is going on by bits, slowly, 'cause me and Pepper are on college and very busy atm. So as she started programming the jumps - which was not completely decided to have in the final game, which caught me by surprise - I did this too sprites based on some I saw, including from Irkalla on it's devlog!

But those are not supposed to be the whole jump sprite, just the on air, the phase 4 of the reference you posted. Why? Firstly, 'cause it pass on the feeling quite well, even if it's snappy, and it's easy to animate, and secondly, 'cause we haven't fully decided on how jumping will work on Octavia. Why? Well, as I said, Pepper really wanted to implement jumping, but I haven't thought of the feeling I wanna pass when jumping and the playability. If I want a more responsive jump, more dynamic, there's no way to add a wind up frame, 'cause it will immobilize the player for a frame and that sucks for responsive gameplay. If I decide on going on a more realistic and immersive jump, I can add as many frames as I want, but the jumping on the game will have to be limited, otherwise it will be torture to the player as he will get used to and tired of the winding up and loosing control. Anyway, I'll be definitely be adding poses 3 and 5, but I'm postponing it 'till I have the whole jump thing figured out, since I still have to decide whether or not I include 2 and 6., and animating a whole set is easier for me than doing it on parts, but thanks a LOT for your opinion and help ♥

Hooray, rejoice, for Pepper has finished cleaning up the stairs and now we can actually go down on them!


Everyone knows gray staircases are better.

While that was happening, I was playing Jack the Ripper with my sprites. I've decided that the random generation would be composed of 4 parts: the body, the hair, the fringe and accessories/details, so I went up and divided them, and the possibilities of different students are pretty high, though I haven't finished the accessories part. I even made a gif for you guys to visualize it better how I'm doing it. I'm being careful so every part can match the other, though there will be some combinations which should not happen - I call that "Pepper's problem". Anyway, I'll be posting a more detailed gif of the system when I'm done, which will contain the accessories too, since they might hint what gossip that student might have on them.


Red is body, blue is hair and yellow is fringe.