#wnha

Character Sheet: You / Player / Main Character

Before I get to anything else, let’s talk about ‘you’ first, shall we?

Although the main character's name is changeable, if you don’t wish to pick a name for them, ‘Suzuki Kaede’ is set as the default name.

Why Suzuki? I figured I would just take from one of the most common Japanese surnames.

Why Kaede? I chose it because I wanted a common Japanese unisex name, because the main character themselves is supposed to be gender neutral. So, the name came up as one of the results in Google, it has a somewhat nice and neutral meaning (maple), and I find that it sounds pretty nice, I decided to use it.

To reiterate, throughout the game, I try my best to not mention any physical characteristics and avoid elements which leans heavily to a specific gender in the story. All the characters in the game will also call you with your last name, and only neutral suffix (-san) is used at first. But you could get an event where you would be able to pick how the love interest will call the player, starting from that point in the story (on top of neutral options, there will be choices with gender-specific suffixes which you could pick if you want to). Other than that, all characters will always refer to the MC as ‘they/them’.

Now, moving on to the thing which people has asked about -- the player's Quirk. Here's a text version in case you couldn't see it in the image above for some reason:

What happens when a woman with Enhanced Learning quirk and a man with Camera Vision procreates? A child with exemplary learning ability and a pair of exceptionally observant eyes, apparently! The hereditary Vision you got from your father enables you to focus or scan an object or landscapes. With all the cues and information from your eyes, it seems that you're able to analyze and 'see' particular details of your object of interest in the form of numerical data. Due to the mainly passive nature of your quirk, you have to rely on the traditional weapons for offense, which might not be useful at all depending on your opponent's quirk. It's a plain and nonoffensive ability which isn’t so suited for a hero according to most people, but whatever - you’ll show those noobs the power of a gamer!

In other words, the information in 'Stats',  ' Weapon Proficiency', 'Special Moves', and even the 'Affection' meter, are actually part of the MC's Quirk. This also means, the more you hone your Quirk, the more it could affect your gameplay. I'll talk about that on the Gameplay section below.

There is one thing that’s kind of related to the MC's Quirk and I wanted to clarify. Bakugou did call you this in the demo, and yep, you might have guessed it: “crosshair eyes”. Reticle, crosshair, whatever you want to call it -- it’s that symbol you usually see in the center of your screen whenever you play FPS games. This is the only physical feature of the player's character that I specified (and yes, canonically, Hatsume has a pair of similar looking eyes in the original work). In relation to this, the icon for ‘activating’ your Quirk matches the same symbol.

Gameplay

Introducing: Stats, Special Moves, and Video Games!

Stats

There are 5 basic Stats for all of the characters in the game (brownie points if you recognize where they're taken from!): Speed, Technique, Power, Intelligence, Cooperativeness.

Your own Stats start off low, but you will be able to increase it by doing various activities, such as studying, playing games, winning on Heroics lessons, going to certain places, etc. Different activities raises different Stat, and you're free to choose which particular Stat you want to develop.

What are Stats being used for?

Certain Stat will increase a certain character’s affection, though it won’t be as much as if you hang out with that character.

There are certain places which you can only unlock when a specific Stat reaches a certain point. I’ll talk about hang out places and characters’ schedules in another post.

Weekly one-on-one training matches in Heroics lessons will test a specific Stat or Special Moves each time. Depending on who you chose to become your opponent, that specific Stat will determine the outcome of that match. On one hand, winning these matches can increase your Stat, but on the other hand, there are also special events you could possibly unlock when you lose. Again, I’ll probably talk more in detail about this in another post, since I still don't have the coding part down, so things might change.

Special Moves

Every hero has a Special Move in this universe, and so does the player’s character! While they might not be as flashy as All Might’s iconic United States of Smash, some of your Special Moves will have a direct effect on the gameplay. For example, a certain Special Move could unlock more answer choices for certain scenarios. Another Special Move could be activated to give you hints on how many affection points will be added to a character for the available choices.

You have a total of 5 unlockable Special Moves, and it will be up to you to use this feature: do you spend your time trying to unlock all of it in hope to make your gameplay easier, or ignore them completely in favor of balancing your Stats while pursuing the affection of your chosen love interest? It’s your choice!

(More brownie points for you if you got the reference in that picture lol)

Another use for Special Moves would be in the Heroics lessons, seeing as it might test how your Special Move fares against the opponent you picked.

Video Games

I would say that this particular element plays quite a big role in this game, since the MC learns and develops themselves by playing games. While you do have a set of games which you’ve owned, you’re able to purchase new games from the Video Game store. I would recommend doing this, as there are some neat ones which will help you greatly in your playthrough. But if you're not interested to explore them, that's fine too!

Each video game has a different effect, and it’s up to you to discover them! Or, perhaps, you could unlock a Special Move that allows you to know what effect each of the game has? 😉

What are Video Games being used for?

Most games will only increase specific Stat(s), but there are also others that can unlock Special Moves.

There is one game which helps you to unlock Stats or Special Moves of your classmates, which you can use in the Heroics lesson to pick a suitable opponent based on your current Stats.

In addition to all that, there are 2P games which require more than one person to play, and you could play them with your romance target when they’re available. On top of building your Cooperativeness, choosing the right answers during the gaming session will increase that character's affection.

Others

The basic functions behind some activities like studying, buying video games, and playing video games are done. I will probably move on to code the functions handling the Heroics lesson’s battles and the behind-the-scenes of when the player chooses to go to certain places.

I've also finished the two main custom screens, which is the Quirk and Games page. If I have time and the motivation, I'm guessing I'll be adding the two other additional screens I had thought of doing. We'll see.

Assets

This part is my nightmare, because I’m a perfectionist who’s far too picky when gathering resources…

But no assets = no game, so I did find several assets which I did like. This includes backgrounds, audios, background musics, and some sprites I was planning to use for developing the phone call function. I’m not going to list down all the things I found here, because I don’t think any of you would be interested in a long-ass list, but here’s an amazing background picture which I stumbled upon searching the dark abyss that is the internet:

Full credits to the artist: https://arsenixc.artstation.com/

Writing

I would have to say there isn't too much progress on this side yet, but I did decide on some story elements I want to insert into the game and scripted in a few scenes for the first day. I also managed to code in the dialogs for some common activities / places, like the video game store and a small part of school lunch time.

Honestly, I should probably create a sheet to identify how many scenes I would have to write? So all of us know the progress for this part of the development? ..... Let's see how it goes when my OCD flares up...

Disclaimers

Added Route: Kirishima

Let me preface this first with a declaration: I won’t be adding any more love interest after this. Please please please don’t make me do it 😅 Going through all the plans and re-setting up things to figure out how to add him in was such a painful experience…

But anyway. I will be adding this boy’s route to the full game, because a lot of people seem to want to have him in the game. He does seem like a fun character to write, so I thought I’ll give him a chance.

Gameplay

Places, Schedules, and Hanging Out with the Boys

I think you would have noticed from the last two devlogs, but there are several activities you can do in-game. One of them is to visit a place of your choice at a certain time in a day.

Some places can be unlocked when you reach a certain threshold in a specific stat, and there are others which will be unlocked when you reach a specific threshold in a character’s affection meter. Nai will message you whenever you manage to unlock a new place to visit, so keep a lookout for that!

But what happens when you visit a place?

Well, each character has their own schedules -- which you should be able to figure out either by coincidence or by talking to them at school when prompted to do so. Your Quirk will allow you to see the unlocked schedule of each of the characters, so my advice would be to check it out before deciding where to go! If you manage to come to a specific place at the correct time, you will bump into them. Normally, this will trigger a set of actions you can perform: Talk, Action, and Skinship.

Talking is a safe way to increase your love interest’s affection meter, especially in the first half of the game. More topics can be unlocked under some requirements. Generally, it doesn’t matter where you are, the topics you can talk about will be the same. There are topics which might trigger different reactions depending on how high your love interest’s affection is, so have fun finding them! However, be warned that most topics can be selected only once!

Action is another safe way to further increase your love interest’s affection meter. Unlike talking, different places have a different set of actions you could select from. More actions can also be unlocked under some requirements. Responses to this doesn’t exactly change based on the character’s current affection level, and it’s not limited to one time only.

Skinship is a riskier way to boost the affection meter: simply put, it’s a high gain with a high risk. Consider the character’s current affection level when you’re selecting from this list! He might not like it if you go touchy-feely when you’re not that close yet.

On the other hand, when his affection is high enough, you’ll find that you can have a lot of fun choosing the various options here. So be smart, bide your time, and have fun ;)

And that’s not all! Interaction is a two-way street, so depending on how your love interest views the main character, he will initiate Talk, Action, or even Skinship. There’s a lot of variations in here, and I hope you’ll have fun with this mechanic! I certainly am having fun while also pulling out my hair out of frustration designing this and trying to put the mechanism to control this into code…

Progress-wise, I think at the very least the functions for controlling this specific mechanic have been 80% completed. The actual writing however, is another story. There are still hundreds that I still haven’t had the time to write yet, and most of them are not yet coded in. Those who have been coded in still don't have sprites and music, so really, I’ll just say that the writing progress for this part is less than 1% completed….

On the left is the currently WIP full game project, with what I would say around 2-4% dialogue scripted in. And on the right side is the completed demo project.

…. Can you see how much effort the whole game is going to take me now? I did say to strap in and relax, cause this is going to be a long ride. And I wasn’t kidding lol

"Nai"

Although throughout the first week, the story will flow as your environment / characters around you teaches you on how the game works, I’m aware that the game mechanics might be hard to understand for casual players who aren’t too used to playing otome games (or games in general). Which is pretty much why I’m giving you a ‘helpline’ of some sort, in the form of another character.

Why a character? Because I can and I want to. Shush 😆

If you’ve played the demo, chances are, you’ve encountered a name which you had no recollection of existing in the canon My Hero Academia universe. Well, you’re right. Like the player’s character, Nai (full name: Namae Nai / 名前 ない) doesn’t exactly exist in the canon universe, but she’s here to help you throughout the game. (She’s also there because if she wasn’t, 1-A class members becomes odd number in total and that just feels weird to me -- plus, the team exercise system in Heroics wouldn’t exactly make sense if the class has odd number of students)

For those of you who hate Original Characters with a passion (why tho), you don’t need to worry too much. She won’t be an intrusive character in the plot and will mainly not contact you unless she really has to (seriously, her full name literally means ‘no name’, so give her a break, ok?). And if, even then, you still hate her, well.... Too bad you won’t be able to enjoy the game, I guess.

For those of you who don't mind her existence: I hope you’ll take a liking to her dark sense of humor and appreciate her helping you get through the game!

Others

Fixed some bugs regarding unlocking Special Moves from certain activities and games.

Played around and customized the ‘input name’ for a little bit, so it wouldn’t awkwardly sit on the bottom of the screen. I have 0 talent in designing UI though, so the background still stays as a black screen -- but at least it looks more prominent now.

Added a little sign to indicate which route the player has entered. I think it’s pretty cute! Hopefully you’ll like it.

Assets

Those who follow me on Twitter would have seen this coming, but anyway, I’ll be using TMGS OSTs as the main character theme for the four love interests. Hush hush, okay?

Other than that, unfortunately I didn’t have time to do any assets gathering this month.

Writing

Nothing much to say here. I think I managed to script around 50% of the events in the first day, but honestly I’m not completely satisfied with it so I might go back and tweak them a bit. Still a lot of scenes to be written!

Plans for December

I'm not too sure whether there would be much progress for the next two months, since there are so many things happening and deadlines to be met at work, which is making me really unmotivated to do other side projects in my free time lately. I also feel like I haven't been taking care of my health enough ever since quarantine started, so I'm trying to get back into doing more exercises and looking for healthier food options, which also cuts into my free time and motivation I guess.

With that said, I'll still at least aim for getting some scripts coded in -- particularly for the events in day 1. Other than that, maybe hopefully some assets gathering for supporting Kirishima's newly added route, and finishing up the coding parts that I was unable to finish this month.