Ink Dragon Works

July was all about chapter 7, developing all the obstacles, and finishing the level design.

Main reason I was able to finish it this month is because it’s nearly equal to chapter 1 in length and design, being fairly linear. It also takes place after a point of no return: as such, no reason to account for backtracking and instead of chest puzzles, it’s primarily platforming/enemy challenges with a few health berries here and there. Which are needed, cause part of it being short is that it has no save points. This area is meant to act as a final gauntlet, and encouraging you to seek out all the level ups and bottles and other doodads beforehand.

And now some obstacles for chapter: lava tidal waves, steam geysers, falling volcanic rocks, chain-blast explosions, and even larger lava tidal waves.

I ended up making a lot of obstacles to try and make it feel like a real gauntlet, and hopefully a fun send off. There's still a lot of work left to make the effects look nicer, but as usual my goal was more on the functionality.

With that though… I think that should wrap up the main story’s level design being all roughed out now, which was my goal for this year (save for a handful of optional ones). What that means is I know all the intended challenges and having the map structure set.

It still needs a lot of testing and refining, enemies to code from chapter 4 onwards, cutscene and event/progression scripting, and bosses. Art and sfx will be finalized overtime. Music I'll get to at some point.

Anyway, I think this week I'll take a small break and draw/game. After that, I'll likely go back to chapter 4 and resume dialogue/cutscene/event scripting. As far as the next overarching goal, I'd like to have that aspect nearly-completed for chapters 4 through 7, so that it's possible to playtest the game and story from start to finish, sans enemies/bosses. Hard to gauge how long that'll take... maybe 8 months? Probably longer if I decide to finish up things like Tinker's board game and a Rickity minigame for it...

See you at the end of summer!

Great news! Not much progress again! Did some drawing and writing this month involving some other project. It's not been a good month otherwise. My "I" key is loose and won't snap into place, my headphones broke and don't sit right on my head, my dog ate my homework... you get the idea.

What little I did get to was planning on Chapter 7. Finalizing what obstacles I want and how often they'll appear, deciding if extra enemy types are necessary, and spriting out the bases for obstacles.

Hmmmmmm what could the level theming for this area be... probably disco-related or something.

I did start plotting some of these elements down into level design structure. It's a unique chapter, like a I mentioned before, in that it's a point-of-no-return, so no chest puzzles and purposefully linear. The challenge is meant to be an endurance one, collecting the scant health drops and stocking up on drinks before going through a gauntlet of hazards and enemies to reach the end. I feel like it's going to be a short chapter that'll probably need a lot of refining afterwards, to find the right difficulty.

But for now I'm just figuring out functionality.

Something else I did was finally setting time aside to start a proper debug mode object, something that'll let me toggle settings and pick out rooms rather than binding a bunch of random keys. It feels pretty dumb I never did it this whole time, usually focused on other aspects of the game...

That's about it. Like I said just not a good month. It's all mental stuff I've brought up before; it feels like 3-4 major things happen in the past 4 weeks. The Boys ending, TADC ending, Mina the Hollower coming out, Deltarune chapter 5 coming out, Mouse P.I.... not that I played any of those games, but I do keep up with and it does weigh in a lot on my mind about my own game. I never feel like I'm doing enough, and it always seems pretty modest to me.

My approach with obstacles wasn't trying to come up with something super wacky/innovative, or being overly punishing. I tried to stick to pretty straight-forward stuff that feels more conducive with each other. It would easier to justify all of this if Pocket Adventure was made in 2 years instead of over 10, but idk. I really wanted to make something that fell like a full game, I'm hoping people don't find it underwhelming or annoying.

Next month, I'll be working on chapter 7 object functionality and level design. Hope your summers are going well!

Summer is here! And so is an update on Pocket Adventure.

May was pretty so-so, spending all of it chapter 6 level design, and there’s still a few rooms left to complete. I'd say I’m around 85% done? The lower area there is new; a sewer segment before Poppin and Jupa enter the factory proper.

I did draw up more enemy designs.

Top row: Launzard, Lizword, Galvanari, Clean Shot Bottom row: Hoppinstop, Lead Head, Squeedge

And making base sprites for some of them, too.

Something about chapter 6 as a whole is that it limits save points to only a couple. It’s still pretty accessible, but you have to go out of your way for it, to make you weigh the risk of taking on the next segment versus taking time to heal up. It’s the best compromise I can think of while maintaining the convenience of the save point as both a health restore and place to save, but stressing more on keeping track of health.

My thought process is having longer/tougher segments gives value to having more health, which gives value to buying foods, which gives value to money, which gives value to finding chests, which gives value to exploration, which is where all the gameplay happens.

It also helps prep the challenge for the next chapter, which I’ll get into maybe next month.

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My main goal for June is to finish off chapter 6 level design. That involves about 4 main rooms and 2 bonus ones. I’m also contemplating other design work for 6, like designing and base spriting out specialized enemies, a mid boss, a minigame, and coding an obstacle/enemy hybrid, “Zombie Rickity”. I kinda want to jump to cutscenes for chapter 6 now too… so it’ll either be that, or planning out chapter 7’s obstacles and finalizing the design plan.

Sorry this month was sparse in fun stuff to look at. It probably won't improve until Fall, when I expect to be done with level design for a bit and can focus on enemies/cutscenes/event scripting.

Small update, I ended up skipping last month as I ended up taking a short break, followed by traveling out-of-state, followed by coming down with a cold. Took a bit to get back into the project.

For March I worked on Chapter 4 level design more, rounding out the starting area that leads Poppin and Jupa into the Clock Twerp village. This sequence involves a short "puzzle" where the two have to chase one Clock Twerp into a false wall, to open it.

It involves splitting the two up in order to corral the fella. It gets a little trickier afterwards.

After that is the two exploring the destroyed west part of town, almost getting crushed and picking up the bomb gadget card. The level design is in place, but hasn't been tested yet and has some objects requiring coding.

Chapter 4 also saw the start of cutscene work, given that chapter 3's was finished and it made sense to start fleshing out the two locations connecting to each other. Here's one bit, where PnJ first enter Tickton (there's no background/object assets yet)

During April I switched over to Chapter 6 to continue level design work. It takes place in a factory area, and I'd say I have about 40% of it mapped out.

This involved restructuring it a bit to match current notes. It involves designing for 2 paths and the player potentially entering from either end, so I have to balance how obstacles are introduced with that in mind.

I've also found it needs a bit more coding work for obstacle ideas. One of them was spawning garbage blocks that ride conveyor belts before being dropped into molten steel.

You can jump on them as they melt away, which I hope to make use of it in one section.

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That's about it for this update. My current plan is to keep picking at Chapter 6 and finishing it for May. That would leave the rest of Summer for planning out Chapter 7, and from there I'll have the main story's level design complete. Following that I can continue onto cutscene scripting and enemy coding for chapters 4 through 7. But that's still a ways off.

Hope you all have a nice month!

Hi all, this month was pretty rough. Sick, sleep all fucky, day job picking up, slight burn out. I didn't get as far as I had originally planned but made some progress at least, the focus going back to Chapter 3.

I had wanted to created an optional baseball minigame to discover, a tribute of sorts to the one from Wario Land 4. Various pitches to hit as PnJ, and getting all hits rewards you with chests. The base functionality is here, though I wanted to set up something special for the last pitch... I'll have to get to it n the future.

After picking at that, I went back to scripting out cutscenes. This one finally got to the museum, where they finally reach the Bicentennial Ball and the Gilded Engine! And thus, the real conflict/plot can get underway, of the Engine being stolen and PnJ trying to get it back so that they can join in at the Ball (well, mostly that's what Jupa wants...)

You might remember seeing this from the cutscene at the end of Chapter 1. Now it's in in-game sprite proportions!

Another thing with the museum I wanted to do was add an optional room filled with some old relics. Gives the impression that this actually is a museum, while also adding some lore to the city PnJ travel to.

Part of the work involved designing the original founders of the city, and their wives. I'm pretty happy since it hints at a certain connection with another species.

Because all the work was cutscene related, there isn't really anything too nice to show. This wip down here is a portion of when the Engine is stolen. It's a bit goofy that this engine is so modular it can be taken piece by piece, but felt like a good compromise to showing this groups of Clock Twerp fellas being able to make off with it.

Planning and scripting all this, along with sequence before and after in the museum, took a bit of time to fine-tune.

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The last thing I was doing was working on the small chase sequence with PnJ going after the Clock Twerps before losing them. It's about two cutscenes left, and then Chapter 3 will be done with cutscenes and functionally playable from start to finish (though mostly without proper art assets).

This month, I'd like to follow-through on that, before heading back to Chapter 4 where I'll complete the Clock Twerp village area I had planned out, on top of fleshing out the intro and outro segments for Chapter 4 further.

It's tempting to cram more to-do in there, but what I'm learning is that I should probably pack monthly stuff with less items, so that I don't get overwhelmed.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy Spring!