Welcome to the devlogs for The Nays Origins! These were written last year as I was creating the game, but I haven't publicly posted these until now. So you'll get to see what I was thinking back when I started this project. I originally wrote these in Notion just to present during CUPdates.

As I may have mentioned in a previous CUPdate, one of my goals for this year [2023] is to create a GameBoy game and actually port it to a real cartridge. So far I’ve been learning GB Studio and basically trying to figure out how I can use it to create a game.

One of the first things I did (other than reading the documentation and taking notes) was that I found some of my old RPG Maker 2003 games and tried to recreate a few scenes from them in GB Studio. This was a fun exercise to help me learn the engine and compare it to something that’s familiar: RPG Maker. So I started with The Nays Detective Game and Intense Nay Eventure.

I also started to plan some ideas. I had about 20 different ideas for games I could make when I was just writing down ideas and looking back at my old game idea documents. One idea I came up with was actually what turned into our GGJ project, Tag World Roots. That was too complex so I didn’t end up going with that for this GB project.

The idea I started concepting is a game called The Nays Origins. This is a game about The R Nays and The First Generation Nays, and exploring what happens with those characters before they’re introduced in The Nays.

Right now I’m leaning towards this being more of a puzzle adventure game where you unlock characters with unique abilities that will allow you to progress through levels. I got inspiration from Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury on GBA, where you’d need characters to be at a certain level to be able to break down specific doors. I originally was thinking of doing something similar, but the action battle system is more of a secondary idea for this game that I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to actually implement, so I figured abilities and puzzles might work out better.

I started by concepting some menu ideas on paper, I was trying to go with a really simplified layout because creating in GB Studio comes with a lot of limitations. So I started pretty simple.

And even with those simple designs, some were a little harder to accomplish than others. I started with the easy built-in menu. I wish I could center this or customize it a little more, but this might have to do for now. I at least laid out the different options available (though First Generation Nays was too long so I changed that to just Origins). I’m not sure if I’ll need an Items screen yet, but I did get the rest of them started.

Then I started to figure out how the individual menus worked. I started with just a series of choices, but you can only have up to 8 choices, so that wasn’t exactly going to work for the R Nays or Origins menus. So I decided to make it more visual. I figured out how to add one background picture to a menu that you can technically navigate, but I haven’t figured out how to change that background image based on variables or which is selected, so I might just have to switch between different scenes depending on which is selected. I’m not sure if that will be too wasteful of resources that I don’t have a lot of though, so I’m still working on that. Once I figure it out, I can duplicate it and turn it into the R Nays menu as well.

I also made a mockup of the Worlds menu though. This one was easier and more straightforward.

Then I wrote out a detailed sequence of events, where I detail out each scene and the progression of the game. There are a few parts I’m still figuring out, storywise, but I’m sure I’ll get there! For now, I at least know the progression that I’m planning. I also read through some related Eventures to get inspiration for this game, so I could get some of the facts correctly related to the story.

I also started to program some of the mechanics. So I started with coming up with a basic plan for what a map could look like that has all of the abilities in it. This was just a quick doodle layout and I ended up changing a few of the abilities later anyways, but it was just a quick idea.

I also originally concepted some ideas for HUDs while you’re playing the game, but because I’m limited to only 20 actors per scene, I don’t think I want to waste half of those just with HUD elements. So instead I’m going to make the start sub-menus be a bit more detailed to save on some screen space and actor limitations.

I did a little test on how I want to set up the abilities for each character, and set up some variables for each of them. Some are triggers and others are actors, so that will actually be a good way to make use of resources more efficiently! I was able to get scripts set up for all of the ones that had actors, but wasn’t able to figure out how to get the scripts to work for the triggers, so I might have to just copy and paste those events and hope I don’t need to change anything big for those!