DEVLOG XX | Mid-2022 Status!LARGE GIF AND IMAGE WARNING!Technically, we're past mid-2022 but I figured it was still close enough to a mid-year checkpoint to try and share some general status updates of where I'm at in the project. Since this is the 20th devlog, which feels like a bit of a milestone, I also feel obligated to share a larger general update on things. Making progress on a variety of fronts right now, so I'll skip talking and just dive in.
Art & Animation UpdateThis is a pretty asset-heavy project for a Visual Novel, in terms of environments, characters, animations needed, etc. As such, its been important for me to pushing the project to churn out as much art and animation as we can as I don't want that to become a bottle-neck that eventually turns this into a 3 or 4 year project. As such, there is a lot of time where we're making art or characters for parts of the game we're nowhere near to implementing. In some ways it feels a little backwards for how to approach building assets, but thus far it seems to be working. We've completed about
45% of all the "core" art and animation in the game. Core meaning the basic pieces to have a playable experience. More than likely we will need additional assets for special endings, cutscenes, or just things we realize we're missing as we get deeper into development. So while its not exactly half of all the assets we will ever need, its still a pretty significant number.
In a perfect world, I would love to have completed all core assets by the end of 2022, but given the current % and where we're at in the year, that number will be difficult short of an increase in our speed, which is possible but not easy. Below are some examples of a couple recent characters.
Piper is a Mender, or healer, in the warren much like our protagonist, Fern. A dwarf rabbit, she resents the fact that Fern is slated to become Chief Mender when Fern's mother, the residing Chief Mender, dies. Piper sees how Fern is tempted by the Warrior path, and isn't living up to her mother's greatness as a healer. This can lead to the two of you butting heads throughout your journey. Piper is self-assured and believes so fully in the mender path that it's almost a zealot-like blindness.
Piper. Art by Nora Potwora.
Ragwort is a cruel rabbit, and the right hand of the game's antagonist, Nightshade. A cruel and powerful buck, he was raised by Nightshade, and has now become as good, or better, than Nightshade ever was as a fighter. Ragwort has set his eyes on Fern as a potential mate, though all does belong to Nightshade. Ragwort knows if he waits long enough, he will be the shoo-in to replace Nightshade as Clade Prince, though patience is one of the least of Ragwort’s virtues. Something you could attempt to take advantage of, though Ragwort is not easily controlled.
Ragwort. Art by Jeannette Wang.
We're also making headway on some of the environments, slowly but surely. On average it takes about a month to churn out two environments and get them animated, so this has been relatively slow moving but we continue to make progress. We're about
45% of the way through the environment art, with two more locations currently in progress that I hope will be completed in the end of July. Below are a few interior locations that were completed earlier in July.
The Library & Silene's Room. Art by Erel Matita.
On the animation side, I'll spare you the interior animations, as they're not always the most exciting--though I will say the fires burning in the fireplace are quite soothing. Instead, I'll focus more on the character art, which people are always excited to see. I just got a few characters completed, but will share just one for the purposes of not overloading this image-heavy post. As always, animations for both characters and environments is done in Spine.
Piper. Animation by Jaang Eimyoung.
Close-up of the Mesh Deformation simulating liquid.
Other Development UpdatesUIUX: In other, far less exciting news, we're also working on things besides art and animations. I finally got around to creating and implementing some menu's throughout the game. A Main Menu, a Pause Menu, a Settings Menu, etc. It's one of those minor things that does start making the game feel like a 'real game' when you actually get adjust things like your resolution, pause, save/load, and quit the game. The UI art is all pretty placeholder, so I'll spare you having to see it. But it was technically a small dev milestone to get knocked out.
Writing & Implementation: We've written
75% of Act 1 (of 4), and I've managed to get
69% (
nice) implemented into the game. Of course, once we've got all of Act 1 implemented, I will need to make sure it all ties together so that every character interaction and story event plays out correctly. That will be a pretty major milestone to be able to actually play essentially a rough-cut of the first act and see how the game is feeling, how the story is working, etc. More than likely, we will probably identify that we will need to add more to the story or gameplay features after we've had some time testing the first act. While we have the whole game story outlined, we likely wont begin writing or implementing anything in Act 2 until we're pretty happy with how the first act is feeling. Long-term, we will probably look at offering the first act as a free demo, and it will probably be part of whatever first alpha demo we share with the community here for testing purposes.
Map System: Obviously, as we get more of Act 1 finalized, it will be important to have some sort of system in place to get around the world to all the locations and interact with the various characters. It will likely be a combination of having 'exits' you can select within each scene which will take you to another scene. Additionally, there will be a 'fast travel' option from your character's inventory screen where you will be able to open up a map of either the
Underworld (where the rabbits live) or the
Overworld (above ground). Primarily, I'm implementing that so that the player doesn't have to click through 10 scenes to travel from one side of the map to another. I've started implementing this with a lot of placeholder assets and I'm maybe halfway through getting the fast travel maps working. I'll try and share an update and some visuals on this when its slightly more polished.
Up next, I'll try to record some gameplay videos of conversations, how you can gain traits or resources based on your decisions, and a look at some of the updated Inventory and UI screens. More to come in the next update!
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