Haha I'm so sorry it's a week late, but it's been a whirlwind of a month! Read all about the crazy Merry Crisis VN Steam journey in this month's dev log on Patreon / Ko-fi

A peek behind the scenes at unused and/or placeholder content in Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee. Prompted by the following:

(ASK IN THE AMADEUS DISCORD SERVER AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE.)

I previously posted one of my favorites last year with no context. Here it is:

At the time I was cryptic about it; I can now reveal that this was the placeholder for the "Plant Witch Musings" background:

Which, now, looks like this:

In this case, I had fully intended to keep the tackier vibe of the clip-art placeholder. Then, I ran into that problem called "oh my god I need to ship this game and I don't care what it takes to get it out the door anymore." I just needed ANY vaguely plant-y, green-with-a-dash-of-reddish-pink texture.

I do NOT remember what possessed me to do this, but I took an old cosplay photograph of me as Princess Peach, cropped it to just the rose bush in the background, made it green, and kaleidescope-ified it.

...and I really love how it turned out?! I think this asset connects much better with the organic textures in the rest of the game, while still preserving a sense of stark contrast via the UI and layout.

Sometimes, the asset you make in 10 seconds is the best asset for the job!

The rest of my art placeholders are less fun. Because I hand-drew all of the art, I just took bad photos of the sketches I had in mind that would eventually turn into the finished art, and built the scenes with those.

I have a handful of additional sketches for images I intended to use, but never fully rendered. At a point, I prioritized the important ones, and got creative with re-using things to cover everything else.

The only placeholder-that-never-got-finished I almost regret is this one:

I REALLY wanted Amadeus's talk sprites post-ripping-his-clothes-off-in-certified-werewolf-moment to be tattered and look like shit. But it wasn't in the cards.

I had too many other things to do.

I wanted to be sure, so I ran it by playtesters. All of them said he looks effed enough by default thanks to his scars, so the descriptions alone sufficed.

I am thankful to the ~30-year tradition of video games describing characters as looking bloodied and banged up when their models look perfectly fine. It helped justify my decision.

"Look how much you're bleeding!" - guy referring to a character model in literal pristine condition. don't mind the splits I did in fact speedrun this game

Now here is where I shift gears a little bit to talk about process.

I don't have many more art placeholders to show off. For many aspects of the game's development, I just... didn't use them.

Rather; okay, let's clarify what a "placeholder" IS. Of course I have screenshots of old ugly builds with assets that look terrible. Here's my favorite:

But I don't consider these placeholders, because I made this build in a weekend for fun, WAY before I ever conceived of releasing an entire video game on Steam. I was making a tiny interactive art project for myself based on my OC's.

...and then I moved the goalposts 800 times, but that's not the point.

I am focusing on "placeholders" as assets implemented with the explicit intent of being replaced later.

And I didn't actually do that very much with my art!

I am HUGELY motivated by the process of creating art. I've mentioned in a past devlog that I can't actually write properly until I've first drawn the setting. Generally, I draw stuff first, then that art excites me enough to bother putting it in and building around it.

Case in point being that I didn't touch the build for Episode 2 ~ Reharm until I had first FULLY drawn this:

Art is often my creative launching point. Visual placeholders only come in when something else is my launching point, which is less common for me.

Examples of when I was motivated by something else, meriting the use of visual placeholders:

When finishing a complete build for playtesting. The sketched placeholders above were a result of this priority.

When designing the Plant Witch Musings layout. I didn't care about the specific background; the big-picture UI concept was what I was having fun with.

When building the piano scene. I was COMPLETELY focused on implementing/pacing the dynamic audio to the narration. Art was my absolute last priority.

...that one time I got a really funny idea for an NPC wait I can't believe I forgot to talk about this.

Okay so. You might recognize the basic composition of this image:

I made this janky collage as a basis for downtown Dartmaure. This wasn't a placeholder; it never went in the game. It was purely a reference I used to draw the actual background art.

While drawing, though, I got frustrated that I couldn't see the details of that house's entryway. In the photo, it's obscured by a very inconveniently-placed person who I called a "tourist."

"What if I just put something there in my game too?"

This was, in fact, the inspiration for The Tourist (actual Amadeus character).

I did legitimate research on historical tourism in remote mountain towns to justify this NPC, and decided to make her real.

Because of this, the following bad crop of that individual was used as a placeholder for The Tourist in-game... for about 6 months of development, until she got her proper sprite:

Which I still think is hilarious, and I'm so glad I remembered to mention it.

But I really do think that's about it for placeholder graphics.

However!!

I need to mention something important.

While art placeholders are not (generally) central to my process, text placeholders absolutely are.

Oh my god these are vital.

When building the logic of point-and-click scenes, if I had tried to implement all functionality at once, I would have gone insane.

Placeholder text that says "when you do this action, this thing should happen" was A LIFESAVER. It is THE ONLY REASON THIS GAME GOT FINISHED.

I will cut myself off here before I write an entire second post about using placeholder text to sanity check my code, but it was the backbone of Amadeus's development.

Placeholder text my beloved.

Placeholder text gets shit done.

Thank you placeholder text.

And on that note; thank YOU for reading this, and if you too would like to suggest random topics for me to write long deep dives when I'm procrastinating, the Discord server is linked along with other resources here: linktr.ee/amadeusgame. It's very small (compliment).

Otherwise, stay tuned for exciting updates soon!

This will be shared on the Amadeus blog... but I am posting it on my personal, because in the end, it's about me.

I have had, by my standards and for my purposes, a phenomenal release experience.

People have purchased Amadeus. People have played it and told me that they connected with it, that parts of it stuck with them, that they were moved by the story I told and the art and music I used to tell it. People have supported me both as an artist they respect and as a friend they care about, often both at the same time, which feels incredible. Strangers have been won over by my vision, direction, and execution.

The money I've made is already—even after storefront cuts and taxes—going to be enough to pay for the $100 deposit to Steam for Episode 2, and start putting money towards a "musicians budget" so I can start compensating the non-cello (aka not-just-me) live performances by other musicians.

(Episode 1's guest musician performances were all provided for me by friends & peers for free, or for skill exchange favors.)

So, by all accounts, I've already succeeded with my goals. I have created something ambitious and shared it with people who found meaning in it, and am building towards what's next.

The question now is: what is next?

The full OST release followed by Episodes 2-5, of course! ...But, wait.

Here I am, having finished what is frankly the largest achievement of my life so far by an absolute landslide, and 4 days later I am already mentally moving on to what's next.

Hold on a minute!

How did we even get here?

What did it take for me to get here?

Yesterday, I spent some time browsing my self-coded janky website (which has sound effects BTW it's kinda based) and it all hit me at once.

I created the first draft of that website lowkey on-the-clock when I worked in IT at a nonprofit.

What was my first experience designing a functional(ish) UI for discrete audio controls? It wasn't when I built the menu for Amadeus. It was when I built the world's shittiest HTML sliders with JavaScript attached to them on my website.

The "page turn" sound effects used quite frequently in Amadeus as text progression sounds were first created for the poem about Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 that appears on the "Rust" page of this website. I found a way to re-use them in Amadeus, but that was not what they were originally made for. The poem about Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 came first.

To further broaden my point: the very ability to depict clothing that drapes on bodies in every portrait sprite I have drawn of Amadeus, Solea, the Witch, and everyone else, comes from the years I spent patterning and sewing the cosplays photographed on these pages. It comes from the wisdom of the cool-as-fuck older women I learned from while working alongside them at an old job at a fabric store.

I am a multimedia artist.

I have a far stronger background in music than in anything else, but I could never just be a musician.

Video games have thus far proven to be the medium best-suited for my various interests and skills to coalesce into something relatively polished, but game development is not the only form of art that I find enjoyable to create.

Hell, it may not even be true that games are the medium best-suited to my strengths... they are just the only medium it's been remotely possible to market myself in. The achievement of Amadeus is not just that I have created my life's best work so far (but, to be clear: I have. Nothing else compares in scope and direction), but also that I have finally created something where there's a somewhat-straightforward path to find people who are picking up what I am putting down.

Comparing my launch numbers to your average Reddit Gamedev post, it has been an abject failure. But our goals are not the same, at least right now. What matters to me right now is that every single person who has found my game has told me that they loved it. What matters to me is that people have found it striking, moving, impactful, and unique.

And that I have already made more money from Amadeus Episode 1 than I have ever made from any other creative pursuit in my life.

I wish I didn't have to even mention money in this post, because that's not really what Amadeus is about; but it also... is. Amadeus is the first step in my personal journey to figure out what-the-fuck my life plan is now that I've got my Master's in music composition and have used it to make an unmarketable video game that isn't even fully finished yet. I am in the process of navigating what this first step actually represents for me.

It's definitely not a surprise to me that game development isn't going to pay my bills at this time; that is fully expected.

But I think this release process has given me an idea of what I might build toward, and that's what got me caught in the trap of thinking ahead to the future episodes. I plan to use the subsequent releases of Episodes 2, 3, and 4 to learn more about Steam as a platform, how to build and maintain a community, etc.; and then... when Episode 5 is done... that will be my opportunity to try and put everything I've learned into a real game release, one that I'm going to do everything in my power to make an actually financially viable product.

Because the story will be finished, and I'll already have people who can vouch for my work so far. It seems like my best bet in the long run. This project has always been a long-term commitment, so thinking about the potential for it all to pay off in that finale has really motivated me.

...Which is in some ways a problem! When I finish Episode 5 and actually do manage that release, will I actually be able to enjoy and take pride in it?

Or will I immediately start thinking "well, that's done, now on to my next project, which is the Sonic Adventure spiritual successor of my dreams!" without a moment's rest?

I don't want to do that.

That isn't just bad for me. It's bad for the people who have trusted me enough to purchase and play my game these past few days. What does it say to them, that their heartfelt comments after sharing that experience with me have already become a "been there, done that" moment, to be immediately overwritten by whatever I next focus on?

None of that is right. It goes against what I value, and it goes against the very meaning of the story I am currently telling.

So, I am trying to reject it. (Which is very difficult, but I am trying.)

For anyone who actually clicked through to my website above, you have probably noticed that its design is motivated by a passion for archival. It's archival of my own projects, really; archival in a "weird and silly" way, but archival nevertheless. I made it to remind myself and others about all the things I have done, in a format that I feel best presents them.

I made it so there is never a time at which those accomplishments are obsolete, because I will occasionally remember my website exists, check it, and become absorbed in works I created years or even decades ago.

I feel that my very next project, to complete NOW, before I release the Episode 1 soundtrack and really focus on Episode 2; should be... archival of Episode 1's release experience.

I want to spend some time collecting the feedback that people have shared, and find a format to preserve it for myself to look back on in the years to come. Because it's not all just Steam reviews! It's Discord comments across multiple different servers, it's DMs from different social media sites, it's a quote from a YouTube video posted by a stranger. Those have all been part of this experience, and it will be lost if I don't take the time now to make sure I remember it.

So, that is what I will be doing in the immediate aftermath of the release.

If these priorities resonate with you—wanting to appreciate art long after its time in the spotlight, to find ways to present your projects of passion in different ways and different formats—well, please feel free to check out my work in different places. I hope it tides you over until Amadeus Episode 2, which is going to happen.

I did not spend 3 years of my life shaping every single major decision around what was best for Amadeus to abandon the project after only the first Episode. This is too dear to me to abandon, and I am in it for the long haul.

I hope you are, too.

If you have actually read all of this... there is a chance you just might be.

Thank you so much for your support.

my website | my bandcamp | my twitch | my instagram | my youtube

An Indie Game Dev Made A Dinosaur Souls-Like

and I couldn’t be happier. For a good amount of time, we’ve been experiencing an overflow of “souls-likes” and I wouldn’t complain if they were good, but.. they were mostly hot garbage; with the exception of a few such as: Lies of P, Wukong, and Wuchang for example.

What impresses me more is the fact that this was made by a small team. I believe it was made by one solo dev, but I can’t confirm (let’s just say it is.)

This game needs a little bit of polish and it’ll be up there with the indie goats. In no way is it perfect, but it dang sure has character. I’m adding this one to the Wishlist.