#ducks devlogs

proud to announce i'm participating in my first ever GAME JAM on itch.io! Major Jam, with a theme of "wild". The limitation was announced last night: unpredictable rules.

Today was largely spent brainstorming and starting to build a foundation. I decided on a top-down 2D game, as I'm using this summer to build my portfolio and don't have any 2D projects yet. "WILD CHILD" is the name-in-progress for what I'll make. Not spoiling too much just yet, but it focuses on a group of six girls at a slumber party, all designed after animals from the savanna grasslands :) no particular reason other than i think it's fun.

after brainstorming, most of today went into organizing what exactly i'll need to spend the rest of this week doing, and the order of importance. the very first things i set up in the engine itself - i'm using Unity - were character movement and a dialogue system.

Special shout-out to Game Code Library and her top down tutorial series over on youtube. i'm watching these videos in the most backwards way possible, but they've been a huge help for my first time working in top-down 2D.

on my list for tomorrow is an inventory system - both collecting items, and checking them. once that's in place, i'll start writing and coding actual dialogue for the characters, looking into branching dialogue trees based on different variables.

i've also been putting my beloved helper to work today - i gave @lewispeppers the job of designing the characters, and he's been cooking all day. godbless

so remember when i said it would be done on time...? lol.

i swear to god, this game will be completed on time. i swear it. i fucking swear it

the NPC dialogue script is 100% complete and tested and i am about halfway through duplicating it and customizing for all of the NPCS (which is, honestly, only about 15% of the process, believe it or not). I added back in a pausing mechanic that I accidentally deleted. The inventory UI is BEAUTIFUL. the interactable items all have two sprites (one for the environment, one for your inventory) and a little ‼️ pops up above your head when you get close to one.

tomorrow is the last day. I need to add my endings and my beginning screen, as well as finish my NPCS. and.

if anything’s gonna kill me, it’s gonna be pixel sprites. i’m only animating the main character, but i still have to draw the rest. ough. ough.

POSITIVE PROGRESS!!!!

it is 6:30 in the morning. i just finished a monster energy drink. i got yelled at by a bus driver this morning (yesterday?). but most importantly, i have made SIGNIFICANT progress!!!

i finished setting up my dialogue system, even with scrapping and rewriting everything. it's messy and a bit cumbersome, sure, but it's complete and functional! i finished the background art - only need interactables and character sprites now. and i finally settled on a look for the UI and started implementing that sort of thing, finishing the text box / dialogue display today and will be finishing the inventory tomorrow.

goals for tomorrow include getting all of the characters set up with placeholders and finishing as much of the dialogue as i can, as well as finishing the inventory UI and getting the main menu / end scenes at least started. also sprites, but i'm going to try to make those as simple as possible.

i'm confident i can get this done! it'll be nose to the grindstone these next few days, but it'll be done.

not much news today, but know it not to be from a lack of work. ive had to scrap and rewrite much of my code, as I was relying too heavily on tutorials that didn't explain what everything did and ended up getting lost in the weeds. embarrasingly, i've been able to catch back up with almost everything i made in days 1-3 in one sitting by figuring everything out myself. a lesson in self confidence?

we're hitting the point that i'm worried about needing to cut content out. i'm focusing only on what matters right now and making good progress. started drawing some art at work, and i'll draw more tomorrow after i take my bike in to get checked out. goals for tomorrow are the last big chunk of code for the dialogue, and then scene transitions / different endings.

Late one today. The illness still has me, so wasn't as productive as I could've been.

Finished storyboarding all of the art I'll need, as well as fleshed out more of the actual story. Set up dialogue trees, and started on a system for gifting items to the NPCS through said dialogue tree.

Tomorrow, I finish the gifting system, write out a full dialogue tree for at least one (1) NPC, and start drawing pixel sprites or UI elements.