HYPERSOMNIA is a RPG about friends, otherworldly threats, the government, and eyes. Lots of eyes. In development for Windows OS, Powered by RPG MAKER MV.
HYPERSOMNIA is an in-development turn-based RPG created by @copperthejackal
You play as Ross Cambell, a boy who after witnessing the murder of his mother, finds out that demons exist. (Bummer!)
Years later, when demons and other paranormal creatures start attacking the earth, Ross (who is now a teenage paranormal investigator) sets out to study the paranormal, defeat demons, and save the world. With the help of some unlikely friends.
FIGHT DEMONS, THE GOVERNMENT, AND THE PARANORMAL! TRAVEL THE NATION OF STARLING...
HYPERSOMNIA AUGUST DEV LOG : “The last one for a little while unless you're reading this like 4 years in the future and the game's still being made but I didn't do anymore dev logs so it's pretty clear that I stopped here so if thats the case, it was a good run and thank you for reading! AKA the Clerks one.”
Hey! Hi! Welcome to the last (for now hopefully) dev log!
I'd like to be completely clear with why they're ending here for now, I am not going to be able to work on HYPERSOMNIA as frequently for like, the next year.
I'm starting college next week, and I'm also starting work tomorrow, which is going to eat up a lot of my time. I'll be graduating in April, as my course is only 8 months long.
This means that I'm not going to be able to make monthly dev logs like this with the time I have going forward. Now, this doesn't mean im stopping work ON HYPERSOMNIA, I'll be working on it when I can, because it's a passion project for me and once I'm working, I can invest more money into it.
Ideally this could continue alongside everything else in my life, but I just don't have that kinda energy or time.
As a parting gift though, I did do some stuff this month after I settled in from the move, so I hope you enjoy it, thank you for reading these logs!
First off, I've done more mapping for the forest north of Pigeonville! I've been struggling with this area a lot recently. Forest areas are kinda hard to map because you want to place things in a way that makes them natural, but you also want to convey to the player where to go. I've got a few more of these maps to make for the area and then I can move on to the caves that I've shown off before.
Here's a few areas from the map that I really liked making. There's some item boxes around the area for players who do some exploring. I haven't decided on what I'd like the item boxes to be yet, so for now they're just base asset chests.
I also redid Ross' special attack sprite. The lighting on it I'm kinda tied on, because all of the other characters have static shading while this animation has more animated shading. I'm leaning more for static but we'll see, maybe I'll do different shading for everyone else.
Also! I mentioned that I would talk about this in the previous dev log;
Debra was given a crowbar! I thought it'd be fitting 'cause she works in a port-town. Lots of fish, gotta open crates, y'know? It's like that and 25% because of Half-Life.
I'd also like to talk about our new trailer that came out! If you haven't seen it, you can watch it here:
This trailer was insanely fun to make, and as of right now it's my favourite trailer I've made for the game.
The biggest things I wanted to improve on with this trailer were the editing, and presentation. I've been showing off HYPERSOMNIA for a few years but I feel as if outside of the synopsis, people don't know much about HYPERSOMNIA.
The trailers have lacked a lot of the attitude and feel HYPERSOMNIA has, and I wanted to make it more apparent which seemed to pay off!
Some people in the live chat nailed the Scott Pilgrim influence, as well as the general punk undertone the game has. It's something I've strived for the game to give off since 2022. So I'm happy to see people recognizing it from this trailer.
And with that, that's all I've really got to share for this month. There's more work being done, but it's not stuff I'm ready to show you all yet.
Again, thank you all for reading these, I had a lot of fun with them! I hope sometime in the future I'll be able to come back to these with more content and further progress in the game.
Until then though, take care! And keep your eyes PEELED!!!
If this is your first log you’re reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.
Yeah baby, none of that "If you're new here" stuff anymore! This is dev log #6! If you're new here read anyways, because if you're reading this you probably know what HYPERSOMNIA is. If not though, then welcome! Let me show you what I've been working on this month!
BUT BEFORE THAT!
If you didn't know, the MOTHER DIRECT is TOMORROW! (Which is why I'm writing this on Friday instead of Saturday)
HYPERSOMNIA will be there! We released a trailer teaser that you can watch right now, and the full trailer will be a part of the direct premiering at 6PM ET!
If you are a content creator, I ask as an indie developer to please talk about the indies and don't just skip over them.
I'm not asking this because I want you to talk about my game, but just please talk about the indies because they deserve your attention. Just because you're not familiar with these games doesn't mean they're not worth looking into.
If theres an indie game in this direct or in general that catches your attention please talk about it, because it's incredibly valuable to people trying to find an audience.
TALK ABOUT INDIES!
Now, back to your regularly scheduled indie games:
So, what have you been up to Ferris? I'll show ya!
First off, I've been working on designing enemies for the demo! Now I've realized over the last month that I am really really weak at designing common enemies.
Trying to avoid RPG tropes and weak/overused ideas and jokes is tough because it means I can't really bullshit like 50 enemies and call it a day, each enemy takes a long time and needs a strong idea, sometimes it'll take me multiple days to come up with good ideas!
I came up with these two recently, and I think they're good examples of my thought process for designing enemies.
HYPERSOMNIA's enemies revolve around a paranormal theme. It's an aspect of the first MOTHER that I missed in MOTHER 2 and 3, which inspired HYPERSOMNIA to lean into it so much.
I try to also keep some sense of comedy in my designs, HYPERSOMNIA has paranormal aspects and it has serious moments, but I try not to mix the two with common enemies because I just don't think it'd make a very interesting enemy roster.
Could you imagine an EarthBound inspired game with enemies like actual demons from hell or serial killers? It's something I would've written in 7th grade, like the most basic bait-and-switch you could ever see from any media.
I also put together a flowchart while talking with my partner about enemy designs, they weren't exactly on the same page as me while thinking of ideas so I made this to illustrate my thought process for an idea.
It really helps me narrow ideas that I think would work for the game. It isn't exact, so don't look at it like some sort of design bible, but it's more a general guideline.
I also got around to spriting that cow enemy. My friend suggested the name Moo-F-O which I liked better than the names I was thinking of.
I'll probably get around to spriting that TV enemy after I finish writing.
As the next "Thing I Did This Month", you may have noticed that Katz's coat is a different color!
I made this change while redoing her sprites. I was dissatisfied with how her black coat blends into the game's brown outlines so I decided on giving her a brown coat instead. It also helps her stand out a bit against Iggy, who also has a black coat.
I've also recently been working on some concept art, I've talked before about how I don't like Ross' special attack sprite, so I've been trying to come up with a better pose
I tried hard to make that pose he has in the original work because I think it looks cool but I just found that the pose on the right was easier for me to draw.
I've also been thinking of giving Debra a new starter weapon, initially she had a pan but I figured I should find something else for her, I don't like how similar it is to Ana and Paula from MOTHER. I'm still on the fence about it, so if I don't write about her having a new weapon next month then I'm still thinking about it.
And other then that, that's all I've really done this month! It's not much but I feel its more interesting then the last few months. I've had a lot going on in my life, and early in august I'll be moving out. Hopefully I'll be able to settle quick, because for August I'll probably mostly be taking a break.
I usually do take a break after a trailer comes out, so you'll definitely hear from me next month but we'll see if I have things to talk about. Until next time! And don't forget to watch the MOTHER DIRECT, live at 6pm ET!
If this is your first log you’re reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.
Let's go bound with MOTHER / EarthBound fan projects and Motherlike indies delivered directly to you on July 27 at 6PM ET! Subscribe on YouTube to see it live!
Hi! I already wrote this entire dev log but I closed the tab by accident, so it's now 10:55pm and I'm going to try and speedrun writing something that took me an hour to write.
For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here I've been saying this for 6 months.
if you don't know what this is or are confused on what HYPERSOMNIA is read the other dev logs i've said this like every time lol
So, just as a heads up this log isn't going to be super long with new content because I have been insanely busy these last few months! I just graduated High School and the last few months have been me cramming to make sure I pass and could graduate and now I am!!! Yay!!!
I won 2 awards at my grad (One of them being excellence in arts :D) and the other I was given a check for 200$ so I snagged one of these!
Super happy I finally got a display tablet for drawing, I've wanted one of these since I was like 14 and it feels awesome to have one now. I got this thing super cheap too, this thing usually goes for like 300-350 Canadian and I got it for 130! Super super happy about this.
That's all from me personally, but I would like to say just as 1 last thing before the updates, Happy Pride Month to all who identify as LGBTQ+, I myself am queer and just want to remind all of you that you are loved and accepted. Hopefully I can get this out before midnight so it's still pride month LOL
OK! NOW FOR UPDATES! I don't have too much to share today but I do have somethings I want to show off.
First things first, I've been respriting some characters! Ross and Jack are the biggest edits I've made so far so I'd like to show them off.
(Left is old, and right is new!)
Ross' walking sprites were updated! I was kind of dissatisfied with how Ross looks like he's struttin' everywhere so I redid it to give him a more casual walk. I'm very happy with this change and I plan for it to be the base walking animation going forward. I also updated his side profiles slightly to look closer to the key art I illustrated.
Jack also had his idles redone! He I think was the biggest thing I needed to resprite, his old sprite is kind of cluttered and poorly detailed so for his new one I simplified a lot of the shading and reshaped his hair and mask. I think it came out really well.
Also, just earlier I was working on music for the game.
I'm really happy with how this came out, I just got high and made Half-Life music (Which is what I was aiming for LOL)
Hopefully I can get to a point where I can finish off the soundtrack for the demo and post it all. Some friends of mine were a bit sad I delisted the tracks I had up initially so I hope to get those up again soon.
I've also been storyboarding out some early game cutscenes, I can't show a lot because it's all a bit spoiler-y but I will put this in the log.
And one last thing too, THE MOTHER DIRECT!
on July 27 at 6PM ET, MOTHER FOREVER will be hosting the MOTHER Direct, which HYPERSOMNIA is a part of!
There'll be a ton of indie games, fan projects, and other things relating to or inspired by the MOTHER series! Please give it a watch if you can. If you can't make it, the event will remain on MOTHER FOREVER's YouTube channel, and I'll be uploading HYPERSOMNIA's trailer on YouTube, Twitter, Steam, and here. If you do catch the stream or end up watching it after, leave a comment! Tell 'em Ferris sent ya. Do it, or I'll cry. I'm expecting at least 1 "Ferris sent me!" or I'll cry. I swear, I will do it!
If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.
HYPERSOMNIA MAY DEV LOG : “COOKIN' IN THE KITCHEN”
Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here yada yada yada,
if you don't know what this is or are confused on what hypersomnia is read the other dev logs i've said this like every time lol
Hey! Hi! Hello! Welcome to the dev log!
I'd like to apologize about last month, I was going through a big block on development and I got practically nothing done. I've also been focusing on real life stuff which has been strange!
OK! So, first things first. Some of you might've seen on our Twitter, the new trailer is DONE! It's been "finished" for a few weeks now but I went back and made some small edits and now I can fully say it's complete!
I'm insanely happy with how this one came out. I went all out on it and I think you guys will agree when it releases that it just completely blows all our other trailers right out of the water. From music, to editing, to visuals, presentation, everything.
I'm more than excited to show you guys this trailer, and hopefully you all will be able to see it soon! It'll be premiering in this years MOTHER DIRECT (as always lol), so be ready for that! Tons of great fangames and indies are gonna be shown off, along with other MOTHER projects, so if you're interested I highly suggest you keep up with M4E.
Now, onto a more direct game update!
As of right now, the demo is about 50% playable!
This month has been almost exclusively eventing and scripting for the game. That 50% doesn't mean the demo is halfway finished, but it means that we're halfway there to getting the demo playable from start to finish. There's still a lot I gotta do, but eventing is the biggest hurdle for me currently, so it should only be up from here.
Also,
Pigeonville got a bit of a makeover recently! I wanted to make the town look a bit more lively and urban, so I took the time to redo and add a few different buildings. I'm really happy with how it changed the look of the town, and I hope to use this as a base for other areas going forward.
This didn't come without some challenge though. Both the game's prologue and first chapter take place in Pigeonville, and because so many different events are used between the 2 sections, I've had PV split between 2 maps, one for the prologue and the other for chapter 1.
I initially did these edits on the CH1 version of the map, but while porting them to the PL version, I managed to completely screw up almost all the events in the prologue. So while it didn't have to be completely rescripted, I did have to do some playtesting for like a week just to make sure I caught everything that broke.
-
Speaking of bugs, there's been a bit of bug-squashing going on this month. My friend Muffins (Who helps write for the game) and I both sat down and tried to just play through what we have so far, and it was an experience to say the least. The game was NOT this broken in March, so playing through it just showed me so much stuff that broke, and some of it was absolutely hilarious.
I didn't record any of it though! Which is a shame! I'd totally post a montage or something of just the absolute funniest glitches we encountered but I guess it's for another time.
And that's all for this month! Sorry it's not much, but I figured it'd be better to give some sort of update then just oddly go silent. Things will most likely pick up during the mid-summer months, I'll have more stuff to talk about, these logs will be longer like they were back in January and we'll all be home on time for Jay Leno.
It's a bit hard to talk about scripting stuff out for the game since I only can talk about so much before I start spoiling stuff. Will June be better? Will there even be a log in June? Will I survive the summer heat? Only time can tell. And the weather man.
If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.
HYPERSOMNIA MARCH DEV LOG : "If you have love in your heart"
Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here, but for those of you who are new, or just new to our tumblr, let me fill you in!
For 2024, I am trying to release a dev log about HYPERSOMNIA once a month, may come earlier, may come a little late, but I'm doing this to help give insight on to how the game is going, and to give me motivation to work on the game.
First things first, sorry about the incomplete drawing for this month's log. I've been sitting on this drawing for months and haven't touched it, and I needed a drawing for this months log so I thought "Eh, what the hell."
For this month, things have been a bit up and down, I've been focusing on more smaller stuff in engine this month, and bigger stuff outside of engine. So there's not a lot that's been added but there is new stuff that I'd like to share. :)
I'd like to start with the smaller stuff first, since I feel like most logs I've started with the bigger stuff and kinda run out of steam by the end. So it'll be along the lines of "Small in-engine stuff > Big in-engine stuff > News/closing thoughts".
NOW LET'S GET TO THOSE UPDATES!
Lots of menu work has been done this month, which isn't very exciting sounding but it's nice to be getting this stuff over with.
HYPERSOMNIA has a smaller resolution than RPG Maker MV's default, and the thing about that is a lot of content in menus doesn't scale accordingly, leaving stuff to get cut off and preventing the player from accessing information.
One of the things I've had to do is get the player's HP and HS to appear on the status screen. These usually appear on the main menu of the game, but since I use an alternate menu for screen space, they had to be relocated. (courtesy of SundialShark, I'm not familiar with JS so they've been a super big help with certain things in the game.)
The game's title screen also saw a slight improvement, I found a plugin that replaces the windowed options on the title screen with pictures, making them more customized. The title screen artwork itself will be revised later, as I whipped it up as a placeholder.
Also, do you remember last month's dev log? Specifically, the part of it where I talked about the equip menu in battle? Well shortly after writing that dev log, it was finished!
This works how you'd expect it to, you can equip/unequip eyes and give them to other party members. The only drawback to this is that touchscreen isn't fully supported I've been told, which is fine since this is a game intended for PC. It does work with controller though which is nice.
Speaking of battles, I've been working on special attack animations! I have the main 4's offense animations done.
My personal favourite is Jack's. Everyone else does it all cool but Jack aims like he's holding a gun which is cooler. I'll probably touch up Ross' animation, since it looks kinda weird to me. I think his head might be too small.
Also, would you believe me if I told you that isn't all the battle stuff that was done this month? This is where that "Big in-engine" stuff kicks in.
THE BACKGROUND SYSTEM HAS BEEN IMPROVED! (ALONG WITH ME DESIGNING SOME NEW ENEMIES!)
This took a bit of time to configure, but I replaced the old background system for a new one
(Which was originally set up with my buddy Majimjam of HYADES, awesome game that has a demo out RIGHT NOW!)
With Jengamon's EarthBound Backgrounds plugin, it's been really fun to just toy with it and see what I can make. I would try and run down how this works, but the funny thing is I don't even know how this works. Or, at least in full anyways. I know how to configure it and set up new presets for enemies.
That's pretty much all the in-engine stuff I've done this month, but I'm not out of stuff to talk about yet.
First, I recently wrote a thread on the RPG Maker Forums about HYPERSOMNIA, which you can read here!
Secondly, some of you might've seen this already but I decided to cut FIREBALL from the game's soundtrack fully.
There were a multitude of reasons as to why, but the biggest one is I just don't feel like FIREBALL fits HYPERSOMNIA anymore. The vision has shifted since 2021 and I feel like music for battles could reflect it better, so FIREBALL was scrapped.
The song was uploaded to my personal YouTube channel though, so you can still listen to it here.
Third, THE NEW TRAILER IS ALMOST DONE!
There's still a few things that need to be touched up, but the music and footage is all fully recorded! All that's left to do is throw it in the editor and refine it until it's finished.
I'm very proud of this trailer so far, and I think it'll blow every other trailer I've made out of the water. My goal for this trailer was to improve the editing and I think that's definitely one of the highlights for this trailer.
I'd really like to post a quick sneak peak, but everything about this trailer I feel will be such a surprise that I don't want to spoil it. You'll just have to wait for the Mother Direct!
And that's it for this month! Slow but steady progress is how I'd sum up March. I'm definitely looking forward to the future. Mostly because I'm going to a restaurant with family later today, but next month will have more in store. Like my birthday! Big things coming.
Thanks for reading to the end of the dev log, same as always, these are fun to write. I appreciate you reading them!
If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.
HYPERSOMNIA FEBRUARY DEV LOG : "Oh my god, where did the yellow text go"
Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here, but for those of you who are new, or just new to our tumblr, let me fill you in!
For 2024, I am trying to release a dev log about HYPERSOMNIA once a month, may come earlier, may come a little late, but I'm doing this to help give insight on to how the game is going, and to give me motivation to work on the game.
FIRST THINGS FIRST:
I wanna say thanks for the positive reception on last months post! A lot of people were really receptive to it, and as far as posts for this blog go, it's our most popular post which is awesome! (Even if it is just 50 notes at the time of writing this...) As the new year started, I played around with the idea of doing dev logs for HYPERSOMNIA because I was watching a lot of them on YouTube at the time.
By the end of January I couldn't decide if I actually wanted to do them, but I had just pulled an all nighter and decided it would be fun. So thanks! These are fun to make and I'm glad you guys like them :)
NOW, ON WITH THE UPDATES!!!
First off the bat, something big! HYPERSOMNIA's resolution has been changed!
This is something people have been asking me for a very, very long time. Ever since our first trailer people have been asking me to zoom the game in. (Which by the way, it is never as easy as it seems, we'll get into that in a second.)
The big upside about this is I can now play the game with the pixel perfect option on my widescreen display (1366x768), which is SUPER nice. I grew up with CRT's so I have a soft spot for blurry kinda blended together pixels with scan lines, but at the same time clean pixels is so nice to see, especially with games that have simple artstyles.
This has caused some setbacks in terms of development, mostly asset wise. Changing the resolution means that every picture in the overworld and every HUD element in battle needed to be resized or adjusted.
[Take note of that text on the command section of that screenshot, when I get to talking about features we'll talk about what that is.]
The battle screen definitely had to be changed the most, since because the games resolution is now smaller, the old assets no longer fit, so everything had to be crunched down.
Look at it! It looks like a GBA game, the crunch is crazy! Luckily though I managed to get it to work. Only took me about an hour or so to get the battle screen fully readable and functional again.
So, what's with that black box? What are you hiding from us Mx. HYPERSOMNIA?
We'll get to it, jeez! This section is gonna be about 2 mechanics I've been working on adding to battles, first we'll start with what might be a small thing for you, but a huge thing for me.
I CAN GET THEIR GODDAMN FACES TO CHANGE!
I could honest-to-god go on about this for like. 20 minutes. Like I'm talking Pepe Silvia levels of crazy. For the last like, 2 years I have been trying to get the actors faces to change based on their current status effect and I finally have gotten it in the game. 1051920 minutes later.
Do I have it in game at this moment? No because I'm working on the assets for it, but whenever a party member has a status ailment inflicted, their face and name will change to reflect what they're going through.
Can you believe it's only 1 line of code that makes this work? And that I didn't write it but was sent it a YEAR ago and just didn't think to use it??? Am I an idiot??????
Yes????????????????
...
$gameParty.leader().isStateAffected(#) Is the magic line that makes this work. This line specifically would only look for the party leader (so, ross) but I'm 99.9% sure that there's a line for the other party members as well, because a similar line is used to pull up HP, HS (HYPERSOMNIA's Magic Points), and the actors face graphic.
The # is supposed to be replaced with the ID of a status ailment, so for example, 1 would be the dead state, so Ross would display the graphic on the right instead of his regular portrait when his HP is 0.
$gameParty.members()[1] Is what's used to tell the game "Look, who's this number? Find out, and display the information relative to them" In this case, this would be for the second party member, so either Debra or Katz depending on what point you're at in the game.
This is going to be cool to fully implement, because I've been trying to do this forever, and I've wanted to show off how the game displays status effects in a trailer for a looong time.
Now, lets answer the burning, heart wrenching question in everybody's hearts at this very moment...
WHAT THE HELL IS BEHIND THAT BLACK BOX??!?!?!??!??!?
ITS AN EQUIP MENU! GODDAMN!!!!!!
But, it isn't for changing your weapons! This menu is currently planned for only switching eyes.
To balance this (and encourage players to think ahead with battles and utilize their party members), equipping or unequipping an eye takes your turn.
I would show more of this, like how the menu looks, but it's currently unfinished and a little buggy, so maybe next month! Or in the trailer, we'll see.
Super big shoutouts to Nezzy (Sundial Shark) who's been helping getting this to appear the way I want it to, normally the plugin I use for this displays the eyes and your weapons/armour, but Nezzy's been trying to make it only show the eyes which is awesome. Thank you Nezzy!
[Check out their game SOMEWHEN! Give it a wishlist!]
Alright, that's cool! What else?
I recently started working on the last area of Pigeonville! Behind Pigeonville's forest lies an old tourist attraction, a big sprawling cave system that was used to teach kids about Pigeonville's mining town roots! Now just a spot for teenagers to smoke and drink.
This area isn't finished, I plan for it to be about 3 floors and have some more background on the attraction itself. So it'll be more polished in the future!
I also have been working on the Game Over screen!
When you get a game over, you'll be greeted by this screen. When no, you just get booted to the main menu, but when yes, this happens;
The text that displays as Ross gets up will be changed, I just added it while getting this whole thing working and after showing it to some people, they told me it looks like Ross died.
So it'll be more clear by the time the demo comes out.
And, other than some music and writing stuff being done, that's it for February!
This month development-wise has brought a lot of change to the game, new hud, new features, new resolution, new areas, and it's all been a ton of fun.
Writing these dev logs has been really fun in general, Whenever I'm working on adding stuff to the game I'm no longer thinking "I'm gonna have to wait for next year's trailer to show this off fully", it's now "I get to show this off in the next log!" It's super fun and I've been having a great time.
But, that's not all I have to talk about today!
Right after last month's dev log, like I'm talking a day or two later, I got some really awesome fanart that I'd like to show!
This was done by the super talented ProfessorLonic, and everytime I look at this drawing I go crazy, it's so goddamn good guys...
It also made me realize 2 things;
The HYPERSOMNIA cast really translate well into Gorillaz's artstyle.
I've always compared the art I make for HYPERSOMNIA to Scott Pilgrim and Bryan Lee O'Malley's work in general, but it also translates well into Jamie Hewlett's work which is super cool.
The canister on Jack's mask is weird
and should've looked like that instead of the weird 2 lines thing I had going on, so I decided to incorporate that into his design.
Lonic also did this Ross doodle I'm also obsessed with
Their work is super cool, you should really check 'em out
And, If you draw fanart of HYPERSOMNIA, tag the game on Twitter! (@hypersomniagame) I loove seeing fanart and I will retweet it!!!
also shoutouts to my friend benichi and his game dreamtone, he told me he'd play half life deathmatch with me if I said this and I'm itching to gauss boost around so check it out
Heya! Thanks for reading to the end of the dev log! Like I said before, these are really fun to make. I love sharing stuff about my game and it's cool to have a spot where I'm not held back by character limits.
If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to hypersomnia, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game
Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, or are just stopping by, let me introduce you to this post to really set the tone.
For 2024, I am going to try to release a dev log about HYPERSOMNIA once a month, may come earlier, may come a little late, but I'm doing this to help give insight on to how the game is going, and to give me motivation to work on the game.
First things first, big news!
HYPERSOMNIA IS NOW AVAILABLE TO WISHLIST ON STEAM! (LINK)
After a while of back and forwarding with Valve, I've finally got a Steam page to call my own, and MAN is it bizarre seeing my weird little RPG in my Steam library. Like, that's my logo, and my key art, and screenshots of MY game, that's so weird. It doesn't feel real. BUT IT IS!
And, I would really really really really really appreciate it if you would consider wishlisting the game on Steam. It helps with the algorithm, and my happiness because I like seeing numbers go up, it feels good.
I even drew this as a announcement/commemoration for the page going live.
(P.S; if you couldn't tell, I really like Half-Life, it's one of my favorite game series.)
Secondly...
A new trailer is in the works! We were accepted for this year's MOTHER Direct (4th time baby, whoo!)
The trailer has been coming along well, I hope to show more battle oriented clips that I've missed the last few years, like special moves.
Can you believe I've never actually gotten to adding those in the game? I mean, they come set-up in default RPG Maker projects but I've never gotten around to revamping them until now, year 4 of engine work. Isn't that strange?
I also hope to improve on editing in the trailers. Whenever I finish a trailer I come back a few months later to notice minor points where I was kinda sloppy.
I'm not much of a video editor, (I only learned so I could edit trailers on my own) but I'd like to keep them at a good presentable quality. You gotta have standards with that kinda stuff, it's important!
OK, TIME FOR THE ACTUAL GAME STUFF. HERE WE GO.
Abilities are now implemented! And work! Wahoo!
In HYPERSOMNIA, players are able to switch abilities between party members. I find this a really interesting mechanic for how simple it seems, you get to choose who plays what role in your party. I think this is HUGE, and opens up a lot of unique scenarios for the game's encounters. I've had this planned for years, as far back as 2021 if I can recall, so it's super cool seeing it in game.
Mapping is being worked on!
I've also been working on mapping out more areas of the game! The forest part you hopefully saw in the last trailer is almost completely mapped. I've been working on the second part to it and am hoping to finish it sometime soon.
Mapping forests really suck. THOUGH, almost all the maps for the first chapter of the game are done! That's just another step closer to the demo. (Which, FYI, will be on Steam and Itch! ^^)
I've also been working on re-spriting older scenes!
This one's been really fun to do, I've been going back and redoing older stuff from the 2022 trailer, like this train! It's weird seeing it side by side, because you can definitely see where it's come from but at the same time, it looks so different.
(Also side note, these sprites are CRUSTY! EWWW!)
Lastly, Script and Music updates!
The script for HYPERSOMNIA's first act has been completed! with just 37 pages of just cutscene dialog alone! We're also currently working on wrapping up NPC dialog! Not much else to say.
And music is being worked on!
Music has been making some progress! I like to lay out demo's for areas I'm mapping out to help make both the music and scene come together. (Also, to help break up the eerie silence when playtesting...)
Speaking of music, FIREBALL, the games main battle theme, was recently delisted on our YouTube channel.
We did this because we decided we wanted to resample FIREBALL, and found that it's best to not have the song uploaded until a complete, final version is made. At least for the demo, it could possibly change before the final game but that's a bit too far in the future for me to think about fully.
Hey! Thanks for reading the whole dev log! Unless you just skipped to the end, you should probably go back up and read it. there's a steam page now. and some cool ross art at the top. you're missing out!
I hope this was like, readable to you all. I'm new to this whole dev log thing, so if you read it all the way through, let me know! It'd be cool!
I'd like to use this portion to pretty much just advertise Unique Indie RPG's.
Have you ever seen that strange purple square at the beginning of the 2nd and 3rd HYPERSOMNIA trailers?
Yeah, that! That's UNIQUE INDIE RPG's, which is a Discord community for you guessed it, Unique Indie RPG videogames developed by people like me! Or you! Or whoever! Who cares!
I help run it with some of my friends, and we all share cool stuff about our videogames! There's a ton of other SUPER cool RPG Maker games there like Astral Guard [LINK], or SOMEWHEN [LINK], or even MOMOinc [LINK]!
And of course, HYPERSOMNIA. It's a really laid back community, we're all super chill. Come swing by! We'd love to have ya, and SHOW US YOUR GAME!
