#devblog

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to do a short update, so I've decided to split the next update up into two separate updates instead of one. This will mean that both updates are going to be pretty short, but I would rather get an update out that is shorter than push the update back another month and have it be longer.

What this should mean is that there will be an update by the end of this month in terms of what it will include. It will have a short conversation with Cy, a conversation with the professor and also the first RO scene. Pretty much the first scene were you will choose an RO to interact with minus A because they will be introduced in the other update.

That's pretty much it. I've gotten back into a pretty regular writing rhythm, and it should mean that I can hit my writing goals for this year if it keeps up.

[image descriptions: digital illustrations of the main party of in stars and time, posing as a group in an oval-shaped frame. bonnie is front and center, smiling at the viewer while clinging to siffrin. siffrin, without a hat, looks very tired, but tries to smile nonetheless. odile stands behind siffrin with a crutch under her right arm; she smiles professionally. mirabelle stands by siffrin, looking happy and holding hands with isabeau. isabeau is grinning, winking, and waving at the viewer from behind mirabelle, with his left arm in a sling. there is a brick wall behind them. the first image is a regular, monochromatic picture, while the second includes artifacts and chromatic aberration for a glitchy look.]

group photo!!

To Catch A Jackrabbit (TCAJ) is a dating simulator taking place in the universe of Invincible, where you are an experiment of the GDA who has been on the run for years. After moving in to a new apartment, you meet a bunch of odd neighbors, ones who can't seem to leave you alone...

Directed & written by: @crispy-bonnie

Co-written by: @sinfiction & @maskeddevotion

Disclaimer: This game is completely fanmade and is in no way affiliated with Robert Kirkman or Skybound Animation.

-> FAQ

What is TCAJ?

To Catch A Jackrabbit is an episodic Invincible dating simulator created by @crispy-bonnie, drawing themes from otome tropes and aspects of Date Everything! and Dispatch. It follows the story of a GDA experiment who moves into an apartment and learns to live with their strange new neighbors.

When will the game come out?

The game is currently in its very early stages and will not have a playable builds for a while. As of right now, we only have three people on our team—please be patient <3

Where can I play it?

The game will be available on PC, published on itch.io and GameJolt. I am still trying to figure out what engine to use, but I am leaning towards using Godot engine.

How much is the game?

The game will be completely free for all to play. Due to legal ramifications, I cannot make profit from this game, nor do I intend to. This is just a silly project of mine.

Which variants will be dateable?

There are a total of 8 dateables in the game:

Omni Mark / Omnivincible

Sinister Mark / Capevincible

Lensless Mark / Nogogglesvincible

Shiesty Mark / Hoodvincible

Retro Mark / Gogglesvincible

Target Mark / Stripevincible

Mohawk Mark / Movincihawk

Viltrumite Mark / Viltrumincible

Re, ça fait longtemps !

J'ai manqué la fenêtre des 4 ans du Blank pour sortir la V4, alors je me rattrape pour les 5 ans (dans un mois, woah). Je voulais revenir comme une fleure et vous présenter tout d'un coup une fois fini puis je me suis rappelée que j'ai commencé le Blank en faisant des billets de blog au fur et à mesure de mon avancé.

Alors on va reprendre les bonnes habitudes !

Objectifs

Créer un vrai site de documentation du Blank avec : - un meilleur guide d'installation du blank - un guide général sur comment modifier un thème forumactif - un répertoire des plugins - un répertoire des tutoriaux - un répertoire de ressource (libre-service, canvas, ...)

Revoir l'identité visuel du Blank pour renforcer la création d'une plateforme de partage à part entière

Légère refonte visuelle du thème de base

Optimiser le code original du Blank pour le simplifier encore plus

Rattraper les mises à jours de forumactif : liste des sujets en grille, page des dernières activités, ...

Refonte de certain script pour les rendre plus simple d'utilisation (comme pour modifier les textes du qeel, etc)

Création d'un kit d'installation automatique : transférer tout les codes du Blank en un clique sur son forum

Un peu ambitieux, mais tout comme les débuts du Blank tout ne sortira pas d'un coup. Par exemple, le nouveau site sera accessible dès qu'au moins une section sera prête.

Et surtout, je ne suis plus toute seule.

Déjà, il y a le serveur de La Piscine qui regroupe des graphistes et codeurs de la communauté. Un serveur qui ne cesse de gagner en activité et dont les échanges réguliers me motive à relancer la machine. Dessus, j'y ai notamment rencontré @lost-in-codes qui, à ce jour, doit mieux connaître le Blank que moi tant elle a passé de nombreuses heures à aider des dizaines et des dizaines de personne à régler des bugs en tout genre (et majoritairement sur le Blank). Et puis il y a Poumon, ex-Monomer que vous remerciez surement chaque jour pour Switcheroo mais que moi je remercie pour sa précieuse amitié et mentorat.

Nouvelle identité visuelle

Le saviez-vous ? Le logo actuel (et bientôt ancien) avait été réalisé par le talentueux @andthesunrisesagain qui avait réussi à me créer un petit univers graphique sans aucun brief particulier pour un projet dont le but est d'être vide... Encore aujourd'hui je me demande pourquoi il ne m'a pas envoyé bouler haha.

Je l'en remercie encore, mais ça y est, aujourd'hui le Blank a pris beaucoup plus de sens, transformé par chaque nouvelle utilisation que vous en avez fait. Si avant je voyais le Blank comme une page vierge, aujourd'hui je le vois plus comme un "package", prêt à l'emploi, qui attend d'être déballé.

J'ai réalisé ces premiers essais durant l'été, satisfaite par sa simplicité. J'étais pas encore très certaine de la palette, d'autant plus quand on m'a fait remarqué sur La Piscine que ça faisait très imagerie de banque... 💀 (avec raison).

Je me suis pas trop attardée dessus. Je voulais tester ce nouveau logo dans un vrai design pour rapidement mettre sur pied en début de site.

Créer un nouveau site

Le screen au-dessus a été mon point de blocage tout l'été. J'ai un peu fais les choses dans le mauvais sens, en essayant de créer un design sans savoir trop ce que allait contenir ma page. Puis je râlais parce que j'estimais que le blank ne pouvait avoir aucun élément esthétique trop marqué puisque c'est censé être un thème de base, sans "rien", mais que c'était dur de créer autour de "rien".

La santé m'a prise de court, j'ai du revoir un peu mes priorités le temps de prendre enfin des vacances (mes premières depuis 3 ans).

C'est le moral en demi-teinte que j'essaye de m'y remettre fin septembre. Aidée par Poumon, il aura la phrase déclique qui me permettra de me débloquer : "Pourquoi tu commences pas ton design en thème sombre ?"

Entre le premier essai et le deuxième, je prends les choses plus sérieusement, estimant que si je voulais un projet plus « pro » j'allais devoir le concevoir comme tel. Je prends le soin de faire une arborescence du site pour mieux définir et organiser son contenu.

Je "m'autorise" à avoir une esthétique graphique plus présente, dans un style inspiré neo-brutaliste minimaliste (ma came quoi), qui mélange des lignes rigides basées sur une grille et des blocs au arrondis très marqués. A la fois ce qu'on peut voir dans le design de site tech/dev et les rondeurs souvent utilisés par nos forums rpg.

▶️ Vous pouvez explorer en détails le fichier figma qui regroupe mes différents essais.

Et voici le résultat sur lequel je me suis arrêtée pour l'instant !

La palette ne devrait plus trop bouger. Assombrir le tout et se débarrasser des tentatives d'habiller artificiellement le header a permis de rendre le tout plus moderne.

Évidemment j'ai utilisé beaucoup de placeholder pour la maquette, mais il me tarde d'utiliser vos vrais commentaires et vos forums à mettre en avant !

▶️ Vous pouvez regarder en directe le fichier figma sur lequel je travaille la version finale.

Je vais détailler plus en détails mon avancée sur le serveur de La Piscine, si vous voulez nous rejoindre et donner votre avis !

A suivre : rédaction du guide

Oh hello? You found me!

✏️Progress Updates and Mild Insanity

I thought I'd make a habit of logging my work here, since, good news-- I am almost halfway finished the alpha build of A Stray Line's Demo!! Soon, I will be starting regular playtesting again, which is exciting but scary at the same time.

{ A Stray Line is a story rich, point and click RPG with a spoonful of autumnal love and body horror. Draw to cast spells, explore, and find little secrets about existence itself. }

The demo will feature the first chapter in it's entirety, which should be around one to two hours of playtime, unless you REALLY want to get every secret and interaction possible. I cannot say much about the plotline yet, but I hope this story and it's characters can haunt you just as much as they do to me (For real, they haunt me every day, please help)

However, I am currently the sole programmer, writer, and artist. I work on gamedev inbetween my uni classes, which run from 9am to 3pm. As things go, I am very tired 💀 So, I propose--

A kickstarter to hire extra help will be in the future, but until then, I would really appreciate it if you can reblog, or generally spread the news about this game to get it on people's radars!!!

🎮Platforms and Porting

Though the game was initially planned for a windows only release, I have begun tinkering away at a macOS version since I have access to both systems at home. Hopefully both can release around the same time, then I can see if porting to other systems is possible :)

The game is planned to be released on both Steam and Itch.io, but the price for the full game is not yet determined. The demo will be free, of course!

de devblog - introduction to harry

The Research Revamp

Well, it sure has been a while since my last post! As an aside, that post somehow got flagged as being mature, and I can't see the button to appeal it. Doesn't matter too much to me but I really wonder what on earth the algorithm saw that caused it to flag my post!

In any case, I've been keeping very busy, and I've gone through almost everything programming related on the lists I previously posted. My sleep schedule has been somewhat iffy so after each day I'd feel too tired to make a blog post, weeks turned into months, you know the drill! I have a bunch of topics written up so I think I'll be good going back to a weekly posting schedule.

With that out of the way, welcome to my new research user interface! A lot of the text is placeholder because I have completely revamped my research projects to fit in nicer with the other systems (like the AI matrix) and progression within the handcrafted dungeons/campaign.

Nevertheless, the UI is fully functional - we have a nice prominent list of current research instead of two dinky tacked on left/right arrows which were hardly visible, first and foremost. The list of materials in the bottom shows the newly-added scrap cost for research, doing away with bars that would tick up over time to show research progress, as research is now instant.

Finally, you have the somewhat simplified main window. Most playtesters found that the scientific-paper-style I wrote the research in was overwhelming and very text heavy, even when I highlighted the important bits. Now I'm going to keep it to a couple of lines of prose, a succinct description of what you unlock, and maybe repeating the materials/scrap cost within the window, as it is quite big and might otherwise look too empty.

In the video, you can see me accept a bunch of research, and see new ones appear in the list as you clear their dependencies. And of course it's completely navigatable with both mouse only, keyboard only, controller only, or some unholy combination of the three.

Here are some more drawings of Zara! Now talking more about the character itself, I can assure you that Zara will be the most disgusting character of all four. I mean, nothing too crazy, but she will put you in VERY repulsive scenarios.

I just like writing about disgusting stuff that in real life would make my stomach hurt and make me pass out from grossness :’) 

I still haven’t written her route, as I’m fully focused on the demo right now. But I do have a list of the main ideas and events that I want to make happen in her route >:) And I’m so excited to start writing it. 

Maybe in the future I'll show old art about all of them, because these characters are kinda old, originally from another project (that is still happening), but the idea of putting these four in a murder sim is recent, and I liked it so much I decided to do it.

The majority of characters from this other project could definitely fit in murder sims due to the violent nature of most of them. And I’m already thinking and having lots of ideas for this pyromaniac character to have his own murder sim. But that would happen a long time from now.