This is another devlog from 2022 (here)!

I've been making a lot of progress on the first stage of the game and tried to get most of that finalized by this post so I could present as much of it as possible before it's finished (which is the goal for the next post!).

I started out by finishing some character art. I made digital drawings of all of the character portraits. I started with at least one drawing of each of them, then built off of that to make all of the expressions that I needed.

Then I started to work on the dialogue system. I set some things up in RPG Maker and set up the ink dialogue system. Then I wrote the whole first stage of the game (besides one character path). I made a bunch of branching story paths and wrote it all in Ink! This was my first time writing something this in-depth directly in Ink, so it was fun to fully utilize this powerful plugin. I really love it for longer story-focused games, so this was the perfect time for me to use it and test its full potential. I ended up writing a lot throughout the week (~3000 lines).

The transition from Ink to RPG Maker went fairly smoothly and it was honestly maybe my favorite part. It just felt so good seeing everything come together and working with more simple switches and variables to progress the story. I've been working so much on setting everything up with more complex code that I forgot what it was like to do the more simple parts! Those parts wouldn't have been possible without all of the setup I've been doing though, so it paid off!

Then I started to figure out the UI for all of the stages of the game. I used my initial concepts and added color to them so I could start to figure out what I wanted to do with them.

And then I finalized the UI and imported it into the game. Here's my first official final screenshot:

While working on the UI, I made the menu for the game. I wanted to keep it simple and really only include information that would be needed. Right now it's entirely mouse-based, but one of my wishlist tasks is to see if I can make controller/keyboard support too. Not sure if I'll get there, but maybe!

Then I worked on making some sound effects to replace some of the default ones. I plan to come back and make more, but there's at least something there for the minimums now!

And then I made the transition scenes to the second stage of the game. The writing for that is done and I have basic events working in RPG Maker, I just need to make the art so it all comes together. I'm having some trouble with plugins not working well together, so I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with the text boxes for the second stage of the game, since my original plan isn't working out as intended. I might end up using more manual coding of window positions than a plugin since I couldn't get them to work well together, or might just stick with something a little more simplified.

So for my next post, I hope to have this game finished and playable!