#apollo's dev log

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if you couldn't tell by the image.... the only job i could find was making some stupid coffee and serving customers.....

at least it's helped to reduce my social anxiety!!! ( ´ ω ` )

and i have done work on the game during my vacation and afterwards!!! i swear look at the proof!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i've technically been working on the website too... tho i'm making a different website first to test out the capabilities and features before i import the code to my actual website! it looks really rough so i can't show it (sorry orz) but it was a fansite for OMORI that replicated most of WHITE SPACE

to be honest.... i wasn't doing so well after my vacation, so i needed to work on myself, then i got stuck in the mindset of constant improvement and developing art skills so i could potentially become a full time artist ...and this led to art block (´･ω･｀)

and then i took the offer from a friend to work at a certain coffee store chain just to earn some money in the meantime, and so a few months of my life were consumed by that until i started working less all while i still was struggling with art

and now i'm here!!!! suffering from wrist strain and potential carpal tunnel by my own hubris of drawing everyday without stretches and even before work and still in a horrid mindset of endless art improvement and practice!!!!!!!!!!

in fact i'm wearing a wrist brace as i'm typing this right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! help

but back to the main points at hand (pun not intended): scope creep and personal projects

"Dedicated To..." started to morph into a huuuuuge project that's crucial to the multi-game series' plot i want to make in the future so far, it has a very long story, extra chapters, multiple CGs, and lots of sprites for various maps and events (maybe you can see the hints of what i mean in the proof i showed....?)

at this point, the game is put on hold as i reel back and create a smaller game, still experimenting with the rpg maker engine or perhaps looking for other engines!!

all i can say is look forward to whatever i might release next, as i'm not giving up on being a game dev just yet!!!! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

also give me time for the website too

on personal projects, i've had this webcomic i've been wanting to release for SOOOOOOOOOOOOO long!!!!!! and i have so much already done (and in my head)!!!!!!!

but the issue is i can't really work on either making my own games or a webcomic without diminishing the quality of either one or both of them..... ( ; ω ; )

i'll have to think about which project i want to focus on, and what i'll do to achieve it, though both "Dedicated To..." and my not-so-secret webcomic will require me actually finishing writing the story....

honestly if anyone reading this wants to talk about this kind of dilemma with me for whatever reason, i'm free to listen and talk!!! i like talking to people actually!!!

i honestly don't know how to end this, and especially worse to end on a note that says "hi i have no idea what i want to do and i only have so much time," but the life of an artist/game dev is not an easy one....

regardless, thank you once again for reading until the end!! i hope i can make a more positive dev log or an announcement for something soon instead of staying radio silent again (´ﾉω；`)

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progress on the story is going fine!! i think!!!! i haven't written a lot honestly but at least i know what direction i want to take the game in!

previously, i felt like i was unsure if i could properly convey tybalt's suffering while balancing happy moments, nor was i really sure about how reyn should be... i was really stuck for a while and i didn't know if i was doing my best work, but i decided to write whatever i can anyways and edit it later

before i knew it, i was making reyn seem like an insensitive jerk who keeps saying extremely romantic things or keeps thinking about girls!!!!!!!! Σ(￣□￣;)

"but that's not the man tybalt would fall in love with!!! he has better taste!!!" or at least that's what i told myself

i thought to myself "what is so appealing about reyn to tybalt?" while also considering the joke of how both of them are supposed to be extremely generic in design, and i decided to look a bit into romance vns and how the protag acts

honestly i feel like i didn't do enough research still, but there's probably a point where i'm doing too much and i should just trust myself, y'know (^o^;)

someone who's extremely nice and forgiving, but a bit mischevious at times and ready to take action, that's the person i feel like reyn is!! his dynamic with tybalt is all about bringing someone out of their shell and trying to cheer them up!! too bad he won't be there for tybalt when he really needs it (¬‿¬)

picture below of tybalt handing you a list of non-extensive content and trigger warnings totally unrelated

i think i was also trying to make it too depressing when the first 2 days are supposed to be happy to let your guard down!! after all, happiness doesn't hit as hard if there isn't sadness to compare to, right? kinda like the cliche saying of a rainbow coming after rain!!

＼(^o^)／

i feel like i may be stunting my development progress and showing any real progress by focusing on the story first, but this is a story-focused game, so the story should be my best work!! please bear with me for a bit longer!! im working completely solo here with no help after all

ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

by the way, the game will follow roughly 7 days per route, the first 2 days is tybalt and reyn's date hangout, the next 3 days (with a 6 day timeskip in between) is when tybalt suffers, the next is…. well, his gruesome demise ☆

and then the last day is when reyn Finds Out (ゝω・´★)

most of the gameplay will be contained in the 3rd and 4th days after the hangout, and i decided on making simple puzzles! they'll also contribute to the horror atmosphere depending on each route and they'll be simple puzzles because i'm too stupid to think of complicated ones!!!!

i think this should be good for now!! i don't want to reveal all of my cards early if i'm going to continue doing this for a while ( ´ ω ` )

you can stop reading if you'd like, but from here on i want to talk a little bit about a game related to DT i have planned after i complete this one and other updates!!

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woah who's this girl

after this game is over, i might want to work on a fun little old-school styled visual novel running on a simulated DS you are not making me call the DS retro i refuse to believe it

it'll follow an AU of reyn where he meets a certain girl in high school, and it's up to you to help him get with her!!!!!!!!!!!!

tybalt? don't worry about him!!! he's just a side character and the friend that helps you!!!!!!!!!! there totally isnt a secret path that goes down a darker road of how reyn copes with tybalt's death and maybe seeing him dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this game honestly is just a concept so far since i should focus on finishing DT before i actually do anything extra lol

but if you have any good old school romance vns to recommend to me or advice on writing vns, feel free to leave it in the inquiry!!

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using the suffering i have obtained in my college classes, i'm planning on creating my own website!! it'll feature interactable elements where you can view my art, blog posts, projects, characters, and interact with me (apollo or nyarl)!! ( • ̀ω•́ )✧

yeah i repurposed an old piece of mine sue me

you can click on me (apollo or nyarl) and we'll speak to you like a visual novel! there will be random events (and some hidden secrets throughout the website?)

i'm also trying to work on this while working on DT, so please forgive me if progress goes slow m(_ _)m

i'll also be going on a month long vacation from mid april to may, so the next dev log will be in june!!

thank you for reading to the very end!! i don't know how many people actually read these, but i appreciate you if you're reading this!

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man, fall quarter always sucks, and i hate when it gets so dark out so quick!!! how are you supposed to expect apollo to function without much sun!!!!!! ヽ(　`Д´)ﾉ

well, i hope everyone's been okay! i've been trying to be as mentally stable as possible… and it's kind of working! even with seasonal depression, therapy has been helping teach me how to calm myself and live to tomorrow! i did get some anxiety medication a short bit after my last dev log too, and it's been going great for me!! ( ´∀｀ )b

lately, i've been looking at other games and media and wondering what makes psychological horror so good, and what even is it? turns out no one has a set answer and it's hard to describe (´･ω･｀)

looking at the reception of mouthwashing (which i really enjoyed!!), i'm starting to get my own doubts on how scary my game really is and if i'm doing things right enough…

i started to rewrite and add stuff to the first route when i thought i was finished and going to move onto the second route….. i even made the first route much longer as a result, and now the other routes need to match up... ( T∀T)

i ended up putting in more abstract representations and symbolism of mental struggles and fears, similar to how pocket mirror does things! i also especially added more bits where you can actually play the game, as how i currently had it, the game was more of a visual novel with rpg elements and made in rpg maker instead of ren'py lmao

compared to the original script i had, i felt the game's script was set too much in realism and didn't come off as scary, especially thinking about how rpgs themselves aren't really scary since you're not playing in a 1st-person view, therefore you're not that scared because the scary stuff is happening to a 3rd party and takes you out of the immersion

it's a lot more work than i thought trying to make things scary.... you really have to look into human instinct and nature, not to sound too pragmatic ( ´_ゝ`)

before i rant a bit more, here's a preview of reyn's full art, the one tybalt is hopelessly in love with!! feel free to stop reading at this point if you think i'm annoying as shit don't worry i feel the same

i hope i made him look cute AND cool enough! i made him to my tastes after all lol

speaking of which, i hope my feelings—ugly, pitiful, relatable however they may be—get across in this game, i have a lot of anxieties around love, be it familial, platonic, or romantic, and i've always felt lonely, ignored, and out of place a lot of the time

suffice to say, i am projecting on tybalt a lot lol

honestly, i wonder if anyone even reads these, or if anyone cares at all, but i hope someone out there does

as i said in a depressing tweet, my works and stories and i may be worthless, but i like them and they get me wanting to live another day!

i hope by the next update either in the next month or two, i'll have at least two routes finished!

i'm sorry i can't show more than this, but i swear i'm putting my all into this!! especially since i want to work on a comic soon too!

i'll leave everyone with a scrapped doodle i had that i was initially going to include with an update i was gonna post before halloween, but you already know what happened (´･ω･｀)

thank you once again for following me and my stupid, worthless works! (^_^)v (and if you're interested in who exactly these characters i keep posting are, if anyone's interested i have a whole story!! but basically they're all me in a sense!)

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(i may keep saying this for future projects and games so bear with me) "Dedicated To..." (abbreviated as DT from now on) originally was an idea i had in middle school!

it was really edgy tho and i'd honestly kms if it ever got leaked to the public but it was essentially an angst piece for when i was discovering my own sexuality as a gay cis man

staying somewhat true to its gay angst origins, this game is a story based psychological horror rpg maker game! maybe you can add it's a story based gay psychological horror rpg maker game lmao

it won't be a long game, and it'll have 4 routes determined by one early game choice and 5 endings!! the 5th one is considered a secret dont tell anyone

i did change the protagonist's name and design bc it was literally just a self insert for me lmao even had clothes i often wore fucking lame

BUT ANYWAYS!!!!! you'll play as tybalt, a college student majoring in english literature or something as he struggles to create a fairy tale as his capstone (don't think about it too much)

here's a preview of his full art and draft of his portrait as thanks for listening to me ramble so far i will continue to ramble!! (i have yet to turn it into pixel art and plan different expressions)

i really wanted to make a gay character with these kinda cat eyes whatever you call em lol

and the man he'll be pinning for is reyn!! i didnt give him a major bc it doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things!!! he's probably a finance major!!!!

also idk why i named him reyn, it was something i kept from the original middle school stories

ig it was because i was watching chugga's lets play of xenoblade lmao

i've taken some time with working with rpg maker mz before since i had the chance to use it in a game dev class (after splurging most of my financial aid on plugins lmao), but unless i can figure out javascript on my own and break the engine, i'll be focusing on using rpg maker vx ace since it has more plugins!

for now, i'm still focusing on the story and full body character art before diving into programming and learning how to make pixel art _(:3」∠)_

btw i forgot to mention that part. yeah i'm an absolute newbie when it comes to pixel art so i have to learn that too cries

even though i'm making it in rpg maker vx ace, i'm aiming to recreate the feel of rpg maker 2000/2003 because i was SUUUUUUPER inspired by end roll, okegom's games, and specifically for this game charon's works!! so now i gotta bust out the pixels

there will be 4 routes with 5 endings! there was another route + ending but i scrapped it because i only had an idea of the ending (more on that in the future) and nothing else lol

so far i've drafted 3 of the 4 routes! even though there is no canon ending, the 4th one is the one that has the 5th ending and can branch off into other works (once again more on that in the future lmao)

i'm starting to write the dialogue for the 1st route and it's going okay!! tbh i wish i worked on it more over summer break while my college classes aren't gonna kill my ass and classes start next week (´；ω；`)

but i spent a majority of summer break testing out medication for my adhd, and i still am!! it was a really rough process and i'm glad i didn't go through mania-like symptoms while classes were going on _(´ཀ`」 ∠)_

i'm better now tho and i say i'm at a semi good spot!! now time to treat my horrid anxiety lol

i'll end it here for now before it gets too long!! sorry and thanks to listening to me ramble! i'll leave you with a snippet of the intro!

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