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[The Embraced One]

The art is really breathtaking, the production quality really shows! The animations too, really cool stuff. What engine are you planning to use, and what tools apart from Spine in general?

Thanks for all the kind words! Apart from Spine for animations, its being developed in Unity (like yourself). I'm a visual developer so I tend to use tools like Bolt and Playmaker within Unity. I'm currently prototyping with a few tools to manage the dialogue system. Fungus, which is a free plugin, and Dialogue System by Pixel Crushers. I've used both in the past so not clear which of the two will end up being used more predominantly. How about you?

Excellent, we're also using Fungus, though I very heavily customised it to fit our needs. I have not used the Dialogue System you mentioned, so I cant say how it compares. I see now you're on the Fungus Discord server as well.

Other than Fungus, we use ArticyDraft3 for our writing, Databox for saving.

I first used Playmaker then Bolt for almost a year before becoming confident enough to switch to written C#, we no longer use either, just written C# by now, but I feel they were a necessary step for me.

[Alain]

Great job on the characters as always. Regarding the color themes, I think they are very close to each other, but I like #3 best. Depends on the mood of the scene though, because I think I just picked #3 because it feels cozy

[oldblood]

DEVLOG X - An Environment Update

As I've documented in this devlog, environment art has been a bit of an Achilles heel in this project over the first few months. If you'd told me at the start that I wouldn't have made any progress with environment art 4 months into the project, I'd have been quite surprised. In total, I've gone back and forth with about 10 different artists. Done tests with some and just couldn't get the final art to mesh well enough to proceed. One challenge was also just budget-related. I was surprised by the variety of rates in environment art. There was one very talented artist with a large following online that was interested in the project, but her rates were about 5-6x higher than every other artist I was talking with and I just couldn't make it work in the budget.

Well, after an extended search, I'm happy to report that I've come to terms with an Environment Artist named Erel Matita. Ironically, this is the same artist who I shared the roughs thumbnails and color tests with in my last devlog. I had a few more paid tests lined up but was able to move straight into getting a contract signed with Erel after he completed his test. We'll need to eventually add a bit more refinement to it, but overall, was very pleased with the final piece. A couple of images below to show some process and character references. This is definitely a bit of a load off my mind as the search for this artist has been more intensive than I anticipated. Hopefully this is the beginning of a successful working relationship on this project.

Mocking up in 3D and Painting Over

Painted - Near Final

Character Reference in Environment

What are your thoughts or feedback?

[oahda]

Beautiful! And great to see some of the world itself come together, with the houses and that mysterious cave.

[Ramos]

The quality is very solid on the environment direction. It is good to see how your game evolves and that small peek behind the development process is a nice touch, tnx for sharing 

[oldblood]

Beautiful! And great to see some of the world itself come together, with the houses and that mysterious cave.

Thank you! The cave is the entrance to an underground rabbit city. I sort of took the idea of rabbits in the real world living in these underground warrens and kind of expanded on that into what if that was the same in this world, but on a larger scale? As such a lot of the environments in the game will be in these underground cities, but there should be an equal number of locations above-ground as well. Will hopefully create an interesting juxtaposition for darker and brighter locations to visit.

The quality is very solid on the environment direction. It is good to see how your game evolves and that small peek behind the development process is a nice touch, tnx for sharing 

Thanks Ramos, I was definitely pleased with how it turned out. I'm excited to start working with this artist on the environments. Slow process to find the right person for the role, but the patience will hopefully pay off.

[Alain]

It's great to hear you found an agreement that you and your environment artist are happy with. He seems to be doing a great job!

[oahda]

Thank you! The cave is the entrance to an underground rabbit city. I sort of took the idea of rabbits in the real world living in these underground warrens and kind of expanded on that into what if that was the same in this world, but on a larger scale?

Oh, I love that. Great take on it!

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

Will Bugs Bunny be in it?

[Soju and Ink]

i'm not the biggest fan of visual novels, since i'm just too lazy to read. but damn, i love the art and animations you have here. probably some of the best i've ever seen!

[oldblood]

It's great to hear you found an agreement that you and your environment artist are happy with. He seems to be doing a great job!

Thank you! He is doing awesome so far, excited to start sharing some of the new environments that are all WIP.

Will Bugs Bunny be in it?

Sadly, I wasn't able to secure the rights.

i'm not the biggest fan of visual novels, since i'm just too lazy to read. but damn, i love the art and animations you have here. probably some of the best i've ever seen!

That's super kind of you to say. Honestly, I don't play a ton of Visual Novels either as most of them aren't really a genre I'd enjoy. But I do like a good story, so we'll see. If it helps with the reading--the goal is for this to be fully voice acted.

DEVLOG XI - UI MOCKUPS

I'm currently trying to get a feel for how the User Interface might look during dialogue. Given the VN genre, it's a pretty important interface to nail down as you'll be seeing a lot of it. Really, whichever design you choose here, you really need to follow that throughout the rest of the UI. In my mind, there are really two different ways to take the look and feel. Either a simple/clean look or something more elegant and medieval.

I've got two mockups that I would LOVE to get some feedback on from anyone who's willing to share their thoughts. Bear in mind that both of these designs are Work-In-Progress but I'm trying to figure out what elements are or are not working and which of the two styles do people tend to prefer.

CLEAN UI SCREEN - MINIMALIST

ELEGANT UI SCREEN - MEDIEVAL

WHICH DO YOU PREFER?

Obviously, both designs are leaning into a bit of the nature element given the world the game is set in. Things like text-size, design, etc. can all be tweaked or adjusted. My question is primarily around which design has the overall look and feel you think lends itself best. If you have any feedback or ideas for improvement on either design, I'm all ears. Thanks for any feedback you have!

[oahda]

Oof, they're both really pretty! I know you said it'll be tweakable anyway, but as a default I think the relative text size is better in the first one, so I'd prefer that in the second one as well. On the other hand, I think the contrast is better and easier to read in the second one. I think I liked the arrow on the side so the text can fill the whole height of the box better too.

It's tough to choose, but I think the second one is better given the level of everything else. I think this game can pull it off!

[Alain]

I could only repeat what Prinsessa said and prefer the second one. One additional thing that popped to my head was that the first one gives me a feeling that the game could be geared towards tablet play, while the elaborate second one hints at PC play. But this might only be my association. Btw. what are your current plans regarding platforms?

[Soju and Ink]

the "minimalist" one  feels more open and free. just my personal taste though

[Otres1]

I like the second one! Gives more of a fairy tale vibe to it, more like a real book.

[mobilelast]

I prefer the top one.

I like its stylised, more restrained ornaments. Because of the sparse font, it doesn’t feel so information-packed as the second one. Also, the more minimalist text box is easier to scale for different purposes.

[Ramos]

The second one. ELEGANT UI SCREEN

- looks a lot better defined within the game context
- more user-friendly aka more readable + better distinction between background and interface
- looks more polished(by a lot)

[oldblood]

Wow, thanks for all the great feedback everyone! As you can see even reading these responses, there's a bit of divide. That is echoed everywhere else I've shared these for feedback. There's no clear cut UI that people seem to prefer. I'll take that as a good sign that either might be an option but I do wish there was more consensus.

I might try revisiting the white design to refine it a little more. My gut suggests that if the white design was a little more refined that it might be the better option, but we'll see.

[oldblood]

DEVLOG XII - Inventory & Character Resources

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update so I figure I'm due to talk about what I've been working on. Still chipping away on multiple fronts, including (but not limited to) still playing around with the UI to figure out how it could look, writing and revising the story outline--but actually starting to make real progress here, beginning to make actual, significant headway on environment art, as well as starting to pick up animation work again on both characters and environments. So yeah, that's a lot of things. It's honestly exciting to making headway in a few categories simultaneously, and I'm sure I'll dedicate some future devlogs to some of these topics individually, but for this devlog I wanted to focus on something that's been weighing on my head a lot lately...

...adding more 'gamey' elements to the game.

As a narrative-heavy, visual-novel-esque game, it's important to find other elements that are worked into the gameplay so that it's not just endless screens of dialogue with the occasional decision. Where my brain goes with that is immediately wanting to find ways to weave in:

• Character 'Stats' or Resources
• Inventory System

Both of these things are very much in the conceptual stage of development, but for the purposes of testing, I started by implementing a basic character stat/resource called 'Willpower'. I haven't fully worked out how you will be able to gain this yet, but I like the idea of your decisions giving you resources that you can choose to spend throughout the game on major moments. i.e. Do you want to spend 5 Willpower to save character X or would it be better served preventing Y from happening? Or should you just save it for something bigger you fear is coming? I think its a simple but effective way to work in some resource management to the game, and I'm brain-storming on finding other ways to leverage character stats or resources into the gameplay. Special Items are another way to leverage 'gamey' elements without diverging too far from a narrative game. In the end, items are really just more decisions dressed up differently, but I believe they do help change things up. The important thing to keep items interesting is to ensure that every special item can be used in multiple ways that impact the story, rather than just as a way to measure progress (i.e. you can't get past X until you find Y).

Additionally, I'm iterating through a very rough-looking Inventory/Character profile. I thought it would be best to try and create an interface where the player can go to get a high-level overview. Things like any stats or resources they have, any items they may be carrying, and quick access to the Overworld and Underworld maps to facilitate travel. Below are a couple WIP GIF's that showcase what I've got so far. Very much open to feedback or ideas on this:

Placeholder UI - Character Profile w/ Inventory, Map & Resources

Testing Adding & Removing Items from Inventory

It's all still very much a work-in-progress. Ideally once the UI gets finalized we can revisit this layout and improve upon the design, but overall, I'm pretty happy with the progress. Its all early and rough around the edges, but it feels like a step in the right direction for finding ways to make the player's experience feel even more interactive.

What are your thoughts? What are things you believe help make narrative games feel more interactive?[/list]

[Alain]

I am not too familiar with visual novels and was positively surprised that there will be an inventory and resources. I think this is great, it hints at depth and replayability.