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[Pehesse]

I can scarcely believe it, but we're actually reaching the end of that looooong stretch of asset making. Only two more VN characters to animate!
That doesn't mean I'll be done with asset making of course, since there are quite a few backgrounds and event scenes left for the VN (and we're not even talking about the beat'em all segments here). But as far as character animation for VN goes, it should be... done, really? I must have forgotten something somewhere.

Anyway, here's the video showcase, with a slight spoiler/surprise, so don't look if you want to keep some stuff hidden!

[Pehesse]

It's fitting that it should be today as it'll have been 3 full, straight months, but... the VN characters are finally done! Barring unexpected developments/additions, of course.

The next step will be to focus on event scripting, to get a playable first part of the game, minus the complete intro and all the bells and whistles. Ideally, it'll be done within the next 2-3 weeks, to allow for some testing before the end of the month, and the associated deadline...

But for now, the time is celebration as it was a pretty big and exhausting marathon, so even though it really should be when *all* VN assets are done, I'm bumping up the progress bar to 50%! Let's pretend it's actually real for a minute, and rejoice!

[Rebusmind]

Congrats on the nice progress. Love seeing new gifs of the game. Can't wait to give it a go in the future.

[Pehesse]

Congrats on the nice progress. Love seeing new gifs of the game. Can't wait to give it a go in the future.

Thanks :-D Gonna be a while, but it'll come eventually :-D

As for this week, I'm back to scripting events and putting the animations into the existing ones.



Spent quite a while designing and typing out a particular one, showcased in the video here:



Basically, the random encounter against the thugs on the school grounds relies on your difficulty level, on your previous experience with said event, on where you suit currently is and on a random roll to determine which precise event plays out, and it has quite a number of different outcomes/text variation (even though ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, you either beat em, don't, or don't fight them, I guess :-D It's all in the details!)

[Pehesse]

Screens only for a change!
I'm busy working on filling out the VN events. It means a lot of writing text, of course, but I'm also scripting a lot of variable checking as I'd like the game to feel reactive: scenes reference one another, or play out differently on repeats, etc.

There are a few main different type of events: the random ones that occur when you arrive on a location that are meant to provide lore information, those that are meant to affect your stat in an incontrollable way, those that offer choice before affecting your stats, more involved character centric plotlines, and finally, events that occur on set times and will always play out in certain dates at certain places. I try to limit those, to avoid the experience from feeling too systemic, as the overall goal is to make the player react to those random occurrences and balance his planned routine accordingly, rather than offer a strictly linear experience that could be summed up in a walkthrough type "on day x, choose this for best results".

Right now I'm working mainly on those random events that provide lore/information or affect your stats. Those can range from quite limited (not much info to provide on matches during the first month of the game, for instance, as there are none), to very involved, when I cross check difficulty level, day of the week, stat to increase, and a random roll on top to add variance to messages all within a single event!

I'm leaving the plot-centric and date-related plot critical events for later - they're written out elsewhere, but I'm refining ideas and lines as time passes and I'd like those elements to be the best possible, so I'm leaving them for as late as possible, to gain experience on everything that comes before. In a similar vein, there is currently a placeholder intro to the game, but the actual one I have in mind will probably be the last thing I do, to make sure it's the culmination of everything I've learned during development! Or at least, that's the plan, maybe I'll just be so tired by that point I'll throw it under a bus just to be over :-D

I'm planning another week or so of straight writing before doing some more testing and setuping a playable prototype for the first month (albeit with plenty of placeholder still left it, won't make it otherwise), to have a presentable prototype for Indiecade. Not sure I'll make it before the deadline is up, but if I do... well, that'll be nice, though I'm not expecting much! :-D

Oh, and lastly, I've finally done another version of the status bar, so it's more legible! Not sure it'll be the last iteration, I'll see reactions first (and my own eye adjustments) but I hope it's closer to what's needed!

[Pehesse]

Well! It's been some time since I've updated this devlog. What happened since last time? I've been working on the script to get a prototype ready for Indiecade. And, well.. That's done! Most of the first month's script is in, albeit very first draft-y and quite unedited, but at least playable.



I'll get back to scripting dialog and events soon, but I'm back to drawing backgrounds for now, to replace all those placeholders. Newly added are variants of the street (day and night), variants for the classroom (all three possible classes have their own background instead of a generic one), the headmaster's office and the locker room. We're only missing the track field and the official ring variants, along with a couple iterations on existing BGs to add some detail and hidden info.



I've also added a fun (hopefully) thing to do in Honey's room: changing clothes! You'll see what it's for when playing. If it's even for something? To be honest: I'm trying to add a number of elements that have absolutely no impact on the game and are just there for flavor, roleplaying, fun, however you choose to understand them. Hopefully they'll serve that purpose!



As for what's next: well, the above mentioned backgrounds are close to the to-do list top, of course, but I'm planning to get a prototype of a day transition scene running very soon, to see if it adds something to the daily routine or simply artificially lenghtens playtime in a bad way. I hope my idea for it will work out.



Lastly, there are quite a few new tracks to the score... and they're all so, so very good. Morusque is doing an amazing job with those!

[Pehesse]

Well, the daytime transition is done, and it's working!





I'm now making the dreams Honey can have. They're separated in tiers (positive/neutral/nightmares), and the tier she falls in is based on a combination of variables, such as the overall game progression, how many school warnings Honey received, how tired she is... Ideally, it should make for a slow shift over the course of the whole game, to add some tonal flavor to the narration, and not just jump around wildly, although there might be some of that too!

Also, some of them will (hopefully) be rare enough to be surprises not everyone will get to see and might color your understanding of some things differently, adding to the personal feel of each playthrough!

[Pehesse]

Done with all the VN backgrounds! At least, I think I am! I hope I didn't lose track of one or two somewhere. I'll see soon enough.
Done with all the dreams, too, meaning the only big assets left for the VN part are the event backgrounds for each match, and then the ending slides... I'll get to those as I write those scenes!

[Pehesse]

It's been too long without a big-ass .gif, so here's a new one!

I've been working on writing the VN scenes lately, but having trouble finding the right words. To avoid wasting time, I'm doing assets in parallel, and one thing eventually leads to another.

This is the match intro scene for the match against Little Sun, leading directly to the actual fight. There are actually a few different variations of this scene depending on whether or not you've met her before, or even fought her before.

[Pehesse]

Two updates in one today for screenshot saturday, since I didn't post about yesterday's developments, well.. yesterday. So here:




This stuff is about the first post-match scene, making the whole match against Little Sun almost completely linked between VN and fighting. It will also serve as a template for other similar scenes, so it was a good bit of progress right there!

As for today, I'm writing events, so it's not very exciting to show. Just to satiate your eyes, then, have this WIP of the newly redesigned difficulty select screen:



I don't plan on over-indulging into redesigning/redrawing every little thing, since the game would basically never be done, but this one was never more than a placeholder, so... I guess that makes it all right.

[Jasmine]

This game looks absolutely wonderful! I would play this in a heartbeat! Great work so far!

[Pehesse]

This game looks absolutely wonderful! I would play this in a heartbeat! Great work so far!

Many thanks! :-D

[Pehesse]

What's new, what's new? Mainly lots of VN scenes (and of those, mainly character subplots), but here's finally something a bit different: the match intro!



This is of course only the current WIP, there's lots more work to be done (both the background and Honey animations need to be finished, the audience is missing, and there's currently no sound), but it's at least playable. Yes, it's an interactive sequence! It was originally designed as a short animation-only sequence, and over repeated plays I found it quite dull, so I changed it to be (ever so slightly) interactive - just enough to be engaging, I hope :-D
It's actually quite an important sequence for the overall rhythm of the game, even though it plays only a few times, as it transitions between the VN and match fighting segment, and serves as an emotional beat/"chorus". If all goes well, it's also partly made of things I intend to re-use for the trailer. Yes, I've been talking about that one for quite a while. It's coming... eventually.

[Rebusmind]

Wow, this is gonna be the VN with the highest 'production value' since ever! (or maybe since Hotel Dusk: Room 215 )
LOVE the new animations!

[Pehesse]

Wow, this is gonna be the VN with the highest 'production value' since ever! (or maybe since Hotel Dusk: Room 215 )
LOVE the new animations!

Haha, thanks! I just hope it'll run at all in the end, at this point, with all that animation :-D Right now it works on every test machine I've used, but there's still quite a bit to add, so I still worry. And if I ever were to try making it work on anything else than PC... well, it would be pretty interesting to find out how to optimize all that! :-D Any ideas? (First things that come to mind would be to reduce the size of each animation's individual images first, then of most/all assets, to account for the smaller resolution, but I wonder if the overall size/amount of dialog wouldn't still pose a problem... well, it's all hypothetical for now anyway.)

[Rebusmind]

Mh, the first thing that comes to mind is to optimize the texture pages so that everything that is in the same scene is on one page to reduce texture swaps.
Just to give you an idea: in SwapQuest the max texture size is 2048x2048, so everything bigger than that has to be split into several texture groups. After putting the assets of one level in one texture group, the amount of texture swaps reduced dramatically, improving the performance a lot.
I think it's a good idea to make texture groups for every level or place and then some for objects that have to be ready everywhere in the game (like probably most characters).

What software are you working with to create the game?

[Pehesse]

Mh, the first thing that comes to mind is to optimize the texture pages so that everything that is in the same scene is on one page to reduce texture swaps.
Just to give you an idea: in SwapQuest the max texture size is 2048x2048, so everything bigger than that has to be split into several texture groups. After putting the assets of one level in one texture group, the amount of texture swaps reduced dramatically, improving the performance a lot.
I think it's a good idea to make texture groups for every level or place and then some for objects that have to be ready everywhere in the game (like probably most characters).

What software are you working with to create the game?

Good idea! I'm using Contruct 2, so texture pages are automated for the most part (and I'm kind of glad it works that way, too, to be honest), but maybe that's something I'll have to take a closer look to when I'm sure I have every asset I need for a given layout!

[Pehesse]

Doing the rounds, asking the same question where I can!

I just received a mail from Black Shell Media, offering to help promote Honey.

I searched a bit, but found little in the way of definitive positive or negative experience that would sway me either way. Also, it may be foolish of me, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea that Honey is a game in need of a publisher, especially not since it's still quite a ways off.

What are the pro/cons of partnering with a publisher? Do any of you have any experience with them to share?

Any help is deeply appreciated! I've gotten so used to working on my own terms for so long, having somebody reach out like this is both intriguing and a little frightening. I don't want to rush into anything I might ultimately not need, but I also don't want to turn down an offer simply because of general wariness. I don't know enough about what it all entails... so, help, help, I need somebody help! (cue rest of song)

[Fenrir]

You're from France if I'm not wrong? If yes, don't hesitate to contact these guys:
http://www.plug-in-digital.com/
I heard really good things about them, and they offer you a total control on where they provide services or not, for instance if you want to keep a full control about Steam you can, they won't do anything on it, but they'll help you provide your game on other platforms all around the world.

Anyway, don't hesitate to contact several distributors and compare them before choosing one.

[Pehesse]

You're from France if I'm not wrong? If yes, don't hesitate to contact these guys:
http://www.plug-in-digital.com/
I heard really good things about them, and they offer you a total control on where they provide services or not, for instance if you want to keep a full control about Steam you can, they won't do anything on it, but they'll help you provide your game on other platforms all around the world.

Anyway, don't hesitate to contact several distributors and compare them before choosing one.

Thanks a lot for the link! Definitely something I have to keep an eye on.
You're right about contacting several distributors and comparing, as well. I'm just wondering if I should risk contacting one at all... but then again, I still have quite a bit of time left to make that decision.

Thanks for your advice!