- 17/10/2024 - (NEW!)

As a follow-up to the previous post, here's an early showcase of one of the game's first scenes in full, including the first tutorial fight.

Most of the cutscene is finished, barring the placeholder music and Saki's bag disappearing in some animations. The overworld bridge environment is also not entirely finished, and is missing background NPCs, proper lighting on the signs, and general polish. Still, I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out overall. It's my first time publicly showing off a finished(ish) cutscene sequence, so I hope you like it!

- HSTopaz

- 11/10/2024 -

The game's opening sequence is now mostly complete! :)

It contains the game's first few tutorial battles, and covers Saki's arrival in Jadewater, her discovery of the Otherworld, and obtaining her power.

It feels incredibly exciting to finally see the story in a somewhat presentable state after daydreaming about it for so long. I already had most of the animations and cutscene code created from an old demo I gave to some friends a year or two back, so I've mostly spent the past few days refining the code and the script, and transferring the cutscenes to the finished versions of the maps.

I'll get around to uploading some footage in the coming days. My only real reservation about actually showing off some cutscenes at this point in time is that I'm still using placeholder music borrowed from other games, but I think I'll just have to swallow my pride on that for now.

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While working on these scenes, I also finally got around to making myself some basic in-game cutscene debugging tools, that let me pause scenes and move characters and props around during runtime. The most annoying part of implementing cutscenes so far has been estimating the camera and character positions correctly based on the room editor while writing out the code, so I honestly have no idea why I didn't think of creating an in-game way to test them sooner. Hopefully it should makes things a lot smoother.

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Another major help while working on these scenes was that I finally cracked and got myself a second monitor. I bought a very old spare monitor from a thrift store for five dollars ages ago with the intent to use it as a second one while drawing, but ended up getting annoyed with how much desk space it took up and how different it felt than what I was used to, so I quickly abandoned the idea. After years of stubbornly refusing to give it a second chance, however, I've finally realized that the convenience and quality of life that having a second screen brings to coding a game is unmatched. I feel like a fool for not doing this sooner.

(...Please don't laugh at the resolution.)

Thanks for reading! | - HSTopaz

- 08/10/2024 -

A short snippet of the game's first cutscene, in which Sakiko wakes up from a dream on a train. The station platform is still a little unfinished, but everything else is complete.

- HSTopaz

- 04/10/2024 -

Hello! I've done a couple things over the past few days.

Firstly, I finally made portrait art for the tutorial boss, Leon!

He's one of the first characters encountered--a petty gang leader that Saki has the misfortune of angering, and who inadvertently ends up dragging her into the town's supernatural phenomena. He's kind of a smug loser, which is a lot of fun to draw facial expressions for.

I'll get around to adding a character bio page for him sometime soon.

With most necessary maps finished, I've also started working on formally putting together the game's opening sequence. Right now, I'm currently in the process of slightly retooling the way the game handles cutscenes to be more manageable on a large scale, because it's kind of cumbersome at the moment.

(^ The game's very first cutscene is also almost entirely finished...!)

- HSTopaz

- 01/10/2024 -

Hey! Starting this month, I've decided to trial formatting this blog in more of a 'feed' style, with more frequent smaller posts grouped together by month, rather than the larger longform posts I've been making. Writing those large posts has been a little intimidating up until now, so I'm hoping this format might be a little more casual and let me talk about smaller things more frequently.

Over the past week, I've been working on drawing another of the game's major areas, the Rosebank Bridge--a small pedestrian bridge surrounded by a handful of riverside stores and restaurants.

It's still a little unfinished at the moment, but my goal at the moment is mostly to have the general design and layout of every major location planned out so that I can start accurately implementing all of the gameplay elements and cutscenes. Still, I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far. I'm excited to eventually have all the signs glowing in the evening light!

(The staircases are actually a massive pain for collision and depth, though. I think they're the only sideways facing staircases in the whole game, too...)

- HSTopaz