forum I'm developing a game and I may or may not use this to catalog the development because I can

Started August 13, 2022 by @Cadeverek group

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Just as the title says! Idk, since I use this site a lot I might as well use it to give me motivation to finish this (honestly kinda sorta huge) project.
Some of y'all might know me from Henka dearest, and yeah, it's his game. And I'm pumped and full of motivation to do stuff for it so I'm gonna externalize here! I might delete this post later, Idk, I just felt like doing this tbh. A place to keep my logs public, I suppose. Feel free to ask me anything or interact or whatever ig, or just ignore, I'm honestly doing this for me and to catalog my progress :)

It's called Sciamachy, a fantasy-ish, 1950's-esque, psychological horror RPG. Inspired by OMORI and Undertale (ok, I admit, mostly OMORI), as well as like 398735897921848375938742904 traumatic events and a bunch of random songs, and some shows like This Is Us, Bojack Horseman, etc.. It's organized in 10 chapters, has a main-7 group (Inoue as a protagonist, Henka as a deuteragonist, Jack and Amadrya as tritagonists, Kainu, Jikan Seiji and Marylinn as tetartagonists), and the art style is……………… yeah, it's what I like to call a visual salad, it has pixelart, regular art, photo collages, 3D assets, traditional art, literally a visual salad. Obviously, it's still not available anywhere so… yeah! I'm thinking of publishing on Steam and Itch.io, if the price to publish is not too high, idk, if anyone knows anything about this process, I'd love to hear any tips!

I'll update this quite sporadically (unless y'all wanna chat I suppose), and remember, it'll take a while! I'm a university student so my time is limited, even though this is my main project. Plus, I can't work on something non-stop otherwise I end up burnt out and giving up, so I'll go slow and steady. My bf is helping with the game, but not actively, he's more a continuist of sorts (aka makes sure the lore doesn't get out of hand and points out plot holes) and helps with critiques. Art is by me, code by me, music by me, characters by me, story by me. God, this'll take a while. P.S.: This is not a marketing sorta thing, I just wanna interact with people in my favorite site and still be productive. My success is not defined by numbers but it definetely is by fanart OK JUST KIDDING THIS IS NOT HELPING MY CASE-

> Updates.txt

• Made the diagram of the first 4 chapters
• Figured out a way to make a better choice system. Haven't started coding yet though.
• Remaking characters sprites for the 3rd time because IT'S STILL NOT LIKE I WANT 'EM TO
• Mind maps and mind maps and mind maps
• Studying how to make color keys because color theory is my life and one and only purpose in it.
• Painting chapter opening sceneries. Finished flower pixelarts.
• Drawing the army map, it's about 2000x3000px big and e n t i r e l y p i x e l a r t. I'm gonna die.
• Figured out a way to make fall damage. I don't think it'll be useful but eh.
• Currently (like, literally right now) I'm translating and filling out a 13 page long question sheet regarding (nearly) all aspects of the worldbuilding!

> Updates_01oct2022.txt

• I made some PS1 looking 3D flower sprites because I want the visual salad in this to be legendary
• Making the blueprint for the irl miniature army house to use as a background prop
• Tried out the fall damage and it works! Again, might not be useful, but it's something!
• Still filling out the 13 page long questionnaire
• Still making the mind map, had some good progress, filled about 6 of the 10 chapters (including branch variants)
• Made a couple pixelart sprites, including Frank's van (the hardest and largest so far! Not including the background, ofc)
• Solved a couple big plot holes.
• Figured out the main aesthetic(s) and currently doing research on them

> Updates_18nov2022.txt

• WOHOO I MADE A SUPER DUPER TINY PROTOTYPE TO CHECK THE CHOICE SYSTEM AND IT WORKED PERFECTLYYY*
• I wrote down a lot more of the mind map, it's almost done! Next step will be writing more extensively, but I prefer having a blueprint.
• Found out a really cool dithering technique that I'll use in trippy sequences
• Still filling out the 13 page long questionnaire
• I made 2 more songs, which isn't much but it's something
• Making sprites and custom textures to overlay and give the whole thing a more organic feel
• Been studying other games and animators' art with styles similar to what I plan on recreating, aka visual salad
• Had some progress on the army map!!
• Created a mini art book for a university project, which helped me flesh out the world's story
• Made a tiny world story timeline :]
• Found out an easy way to dry flowers (YES THIS MATTERS, IT'S ALL ON PURPOSE I PROMISE)
• Found a cool way to code a drunken 4-direction walk, and it worked!!

*= I'm saying this because I want literally every single action to count, instead of choosing a couple questions that'll take you to a certain ending depending on your answer. This way it'll be less obvious which ending you're getting. This is why I had to test it first, it's a little more time-consuming to code but it's a much better experience imo!

> Updates_30nov2022.txt

• Made a bunch of sprites, specially of trees and so
• Animated the 4 direction walk cycles for Inoue's human form :]
• Already made all the 4 walls of the teeny tiny miniature army shack and weathered the wood, but I need more popsicle sticks to make the interior *cries**. At least I found some cardboard to make the floor, and I already know how to make the furniture. I'll add some flocking (aka fake moss) to some parts while I can't go out to get more sticks.
• Wrote some more in the diagram
• Trying some AI art to use as psychedelic backgrounds for Henka's drug trips, I generally hate AI art with a fucking passion but it's pretty cool for abstract backgrounds like these!
• Coded the overlays, it's cool because it matters given that I'm pretty keen on using lots of color theory stuff
• Finished remaking the player sprites (they had a weird symmetry so I had to one by one add ONE pixel in width to each one. It was tiring but worth it.

> Updates_11fev2023.txt

OOOOO boy it's been a while since I wrote stuff down, let's go! I admit I've been less involved these past 2 months because uh….. yeah I kinda have a literal part-time job now lol. I have a bit less free time but it's fine I suppose, I'll finish college by the end of the year. Speaking of, I might not make much progress this year in particular because I'll graduate so I have this gigantic final assignment that essencially is a full-fledged game and takes the entire 2 semesters aka an year to make. BUT at least its means y'all will get to see another game of mine at the end of the year so I guess that's a plus? And lastly, @Mt. G THANK U I'M GONNA KISS YOU I THOUGHT I WAS JUST SCREAMING TO THE VOID

• Trying to find out how to properly program tilesets
• FIGURED OUT HOW TO CODE THE PERSPECTIVE WOOO LES GOOO (it means I now know how to make the character appear in front or behind a background object, like a tree or furniture. I still have to polish the code because the hitboxes still have a couple issues, but at least it worked, a lil' wonky but it did)
• Many more sprites since I partook a game jam and it was also pixel art, at this very moment I'm recoloring the sprites I made for the jam to fit the game's color palette.
• I finished translating the questionnaire (idk if I mentioned before) and started filling it out
• HAD SOME DOPE IDEAS FOR NEW MECHANICS
• Found out a cool coding technique that allows me to hide every part of the layout except for the surroundings of the player
• Made LOTS of new assets, in particular background items, furniture and interactive objects. Including some signature foods from my region :3 Also fixed some older ones that were the wrong size.
• Settled for a save point style and I'm also starting to choose at what points of the story they'll be accessible

> Updates_19apr2023.txt

HELLO y'all, I'm back again, I made A LOT of progress those last 2 months, surprisingly. So let's startttt there's quite a bunch to go over!
Also, this week I started playing Stardew Valley and Eric Barone/Concerned Ape's skill and sheer determination to make that outstanding game is filling me with determination (and a fuck-ton of inferiority complex lol but it happens, depression's fun)
Also also, I… No longer have a part time job, the company I worked for broke ._. However I'm still working on my Final Papers (TM) for college so I'm busy nonetheless this year as a whole.

• I FOUND OUT HOW TO USE TILESETS PROPERLY AND IT'S SO FUN
• Made a pretty considerable tileset, including all tiles for 4 types of wood, each shade in clean cut and aged arrangements, each type & arrangement in new and rotting shades, each type & arrangment & shade in vertical and horizontal placements, which amounts to about 36 sets only for wood lol. I also made water, sand, grass, light grass, new and aged brick walls, 3 variants of poles/vertical logs for each type of wood, AND THIRTY FUCKING SIX COLORS OF WALL/GROUND TILES. I plan on remaking the sand and grass tiles though!
• A WHOLE LOTTA SPRITES. Specially background items. I also finished recycling some sprites I made for that game jam I mentioned, in other words, I recolored my own sprites to make them fit the theme in the game. I think I already got past the 100 sprite mark?
  P.S.: Just counted, 176 sprites. Not including character or tile sprites.
• I found out a trick that will save me literal HOURS when exporting. Well, 2, actually. 1: I leaned to use sprite sheets, and…
• 2: I learned how to keep the anti-aliasing as nearest-neighbor, which saves me HOURS when exporting .png files.
• Right now, I'm giving the characters sprites a nice make-over. Made a separate sprite sheet exclusively for the characters. I'm really inspired by Stardew Valley so I'm gonna try remaking some sprites I didn't quite love before, they're better now tbh.
• Been furthering the plot, timeline and character development with the help of my boyfriend's questioning and deep RPG knowledge (plus he's running a campaign in which Henka is actually a character and he keeps asking me for tips so he can properly interpret my OC. Pretty fun because it forces me to deepen his character)
• Had a cool idea for an ending scene/easter egg perhaps? I think I know how to code it. It'll be quite extensive and tiring to code but not hard (I think).

Now listen, there's one specific painting in the game that has a LOT of importance to the lore. What do you guys think of me actually painting it IRL and trying to scan or take a picture that I could use as the sprite at some point? The game's gonna have a lot of mixed-media art anyway, I'm asking because well… Canvases ain't cheap in my country, chief. So, what do y'all think?

> Updates_24sep2024.txt

OMG BWAHAHA LONG TIME NO SEE uhhhhh so. Good news: I actually made a (kinda) full game!! Bad news: I'm gonna remake it on a newer engine!! So, Sciamachy is first of all going back to square one, because I personally feel like the character sprites don't look very good and I want to entirely refurbish them. If I do so, I might have to remake all of the other 300+ sprites I already have so that it properly fits with the new sprites. I'll do my best to keep the old and new character sprites similar in size and proportion so that I won't have to restart. I will however, remake the code fully since I plan to move to Godot. I was using Construct2, which is an okay engine but it was discontinued WAAAAY back in 2021, so it definitely has severe flaws and is too outdated to make a huge ass project like Sciamachy is. I learned this because I made the game I mentioned for my finals, Wanderware!! It's not as big in scope as I'd like, more like a vertical slice. I have some hope for this project so I'll probably remake/remaster it for Godot and try to broaden the scope. It's a 2D, multi-technique platformer with open-world elements, and before you think "aw man platformers are so shit and boring" every single enemy has a different mechanic and every single area of the game introduces a different way to play or at least a different visual. It's HIGHLY experimental. If anyone is interested, I can make it available for download somewhere just so you guys can have a little taste of the prototype, although it is not too big in scope and very much not as polished as I'd like, there are some bugs that I wasn't able to patch in time. I'm thinking of polishing and hopefully finding investors for Wanderware and then focusing on both games, but Sciamachy is a story I'm highly passionate about so I want to have full creative control. That's all for tonight fellas

Ooooh, a game thread.

I can tell this'll be a fun ride!