#cygnette rambles

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 18.3.2021

Hello tumblr, my old friend!

I. Am. Back! Phew! First off, I hope everyone is doing well in this new year so far. 💖  I’ve missed being here and sharing the dev process with y’all! The first quarter is nearly over and it feels like I’m in a completely different place...

Well, that’s because I am! 😂 I am officially living in my first ever home, after months of uncertainty, incredible stress, and a sizable mountain of boxes. Sadly I had to put development on hold during that whole time, but I’m so happy to say that I’ve finally settled in. I’m in a new space physically and mentally, and I’m feeling so much more amped up and motivated to WORK. 

That said, I still feel like I need to get my ducks in a row (took me an embarrassingly long time to remember how to use Tumblr 😅 ). So this week I’m focused on catching up, doing some updating, and spring cleaning. New year, new house, new start! 

One of the very few things I actually did manage to work on were the LI playlists, which never ceases to give me inspiration. The last month has got me in the Alek mood, so much so that his ended up being twice as long as the others’. Oop, I sense Volume Two playlists in the future.

Fun coincidence, before I added the cover for Eden’s playlist, the album covers were all orange, her favorite color! Here’s a sneak peek~

👀 🔥

Quick tidbit: Nick’s favorite color is blue and Alek’s favorite color is fuchsia.

Plans for 2021 Quarter 2~

Writing, writing, writing

Snippet releases

More playlists 🎶

Starting coding (like, the realreal coding)

More writing lol

The last and final profile... 🩸

So excited to be back. As always, be kind to yourself and take care! ‘Til next week~

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 19.5.2021

Let’s talk about the nasty ‘E’ word—editing.

I think one of the most terrifying moments for a writer or artist is the moment of hitting ‘publish.’ Art is never finished, only abandoned, and boy do I have plenty of abandonment issues. This last month, I decided—again—to rewrite some pivotal moments in early chapters. The editing process has been particularly brutal for me, especially with trying to keep in mind all the different variables and branches. This is less of a tendency for perfectionism and more like the consequences of an indecisive author. I constantly ask myself during editing, “Could this be better? More punchy? What if I added more variations?” And often, I end up changing it, leading to rewrites and adding even more branches. My only hope that this would lead to a better story in the end...

This is why I tend to like sequels, or the middle part of a story. Once you’re there, the process of establishing the setting, the cast, and the lore is mostly done. And that’s when the real fun begins. 

For example, spot the differences between the flowcharts of chapters one and three~

Funniest part is that these are not even up to date with my most recent edits. 🙈

So the good news is I’m partway through writing Chapter 4. Bad news is that I’m still editing and rewriting Chapters 1-3. 🤡

That’s all I have for you beautiful, patient people for now. I’ll leave you with this photo of my co-worker Trixie basking in the sun with my other cohorts. 

As always, take care of yourself out there~

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 1.12.2020

Welp, and with that, November is over... and so is NaNoWriMo!

This was probably one of the most hectic months for me this year, and thank goodness 2020 is nearly over. I think we’re all ready for the end of 2020, right? November started off extremely stressful, but ended on a high note. I made a whole Thanksgiving meal just for two (and three kitties)...

...And ended up completing 50,769 words for NaNoWriMo! I had never participated before, and it was such a fascinating, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding experience. My general approach was writing about 2,000 words a day, and while there were some days I wasn’t able to write a single word, I got through it, albeit just barely. But now, I feel like my workflow is much more solidified, and honestly, I’m so excited to continue writing.

That puts Covenant at about 65K words for its initial draft! This covers most of Chapters 1-3, and coincidentally, common route for the entire game. This draft is still very rough, and the plan is to spend part of December fine tuning it, along with starting the draft for Chapter 4. Not going to lie, I have a feeling this word count may multiply because I have a tendency to add and change as opposed to cut during editing... We’ll see what happens.

The actual branching off point for locking in a route occurs partway through Chapter 4. This “turning point” will be up for the player to decide which route they’d like to pursue, but they will have also had opportunities to accrue relationship points with all the LIs by then. At the moment, these points are separated into four primary categories: Respect, Friendship, Love... and Obsession. I’ll elaborate more on the blog once I get further into coding. My initial plan was to keep these stats invisible, but now I’m not sure. Let me know if you have any thoughts about that.

Beyond the writing side, I’ve received sneak peeks of the UI and some other assets, and I. Am. So. Hyped. It’s actually feeling like a real game and not just a figment of my imagination anymore. 😂

Thank you all for being so patient with me last month! I want to get back to updating more regularly on the blog now that NaNoWriMo is over and post more lore and, fingers crossed, LI profiles~

Ending this devlog with a track from the series Requiem. The soundtrack is just phenomenal and has been on heavy rotation for me during writing.

Be kind to yourself, and stay safe. Happy December! ❄️

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 24.8.2020

Hello!

It was really fun to finally introduce Covenant to the world last week, and honestly kind of a shock to my system. In a good way! I won’t lie, I had some sleepless nights since then, thinking about all the things I want to accomplish for the game.

The story of Covenant has been developing for years, but making it into a game is a whole journey altogether. I’m so lucky to know some extremely talented and unbelievably kind indie devs who are helping me behind the scenes. I’m eternally grateful to them. 

On that note, there’s been some new developments on that front! I won’t elaborate just yet, but needless to say, I’m incredibly excited. 

Chapter One was pretty solid... as of two weeks ago. Now though? It’s becoming a monster. 😂 I hope to get this bad boy back in shape this week. The Common Route is looking to be about four chapters at the moment. Ten chapters are planned for the full game, but that could possibly change. 💭

Ooh, that was vague of me. Let me offer some snacks in the meantime...

There are three love interests in Covenant. I’m working on their official profiles to share here in the near future, but allow me to quickly introduce them:

Nick Lam. Stoic, cold, intense. Deckhand for a commercial fishery in St. Moritz. He lives in the flat across the hall from you, but usually keeps to himself.

Aleksandr Timko. Cocky, charismatic, ruthless.  A prominent socialite and party boy in Medea. He owns numerous luxury hotels you’ve never heard of.

Eden Vo. Playful, elegant, unwavering. You’re actually not sure what she does. But she’s mysterious and intimidating, that’s for sure.

And that’s it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful week and take care!  Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 24.9.2020

Happy Autumn! 🍂

With Q4 approaching, my primary job is picking back up again, sadly that means less time working on game development. So my dev agenda is getting a bit more sporadic these days.

Biggest news on my end was Procreate 5X getting released! I’m not the most experienced artist nor am I doing official character art for Covenant, but I’ve found working on art helps me get in the right mindset for writing. I haven’t sketched in a while, so the update motivated me to pick it back up, along with inspiration from my talented artist friends. Instead of jumping right into a writing session, I’m sketching for twenty minutes as a warm-up first. Sometimes it’s nice to veg out for a moment, listen to some good music, and just draw to start the day. A huge cup of coffee or hot tea always helps too. ☕

What’s your preferred morning beverage, dear reader? Coffee, tea, juice, water, nothing at all? A little something to think about for a choice in the first chapter...

A little peek at today’s sketch~ Practice makes... well it’s not perfect in the least, but it’s something? 

Speaking of, I’m still at 70% for Chapter One. Er, let’s say 66% if I’m being perfectly honest. 🙈 I’m the only one to blame because I decided to rework some of the beginning scenes. I originally had a particular LI as the first to be introduced to the player, but I switched them out for another. It works out a lot better, but still needs re-writing. So one step forward, two steps back? 😂

Besides doing various dev stuff here and there, not too much else new. I’ll be back soon with some lore posts, as promised. 🙏

Please remember to be kind to yourself, and take care~

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 1.10.2020

October is finally here! 🥧 

Extreme rambles ahead, apologies in advance.

So in the last week, I worked on every aspect of the project in some way. Writing, researching, coding, social media, world-building, etc etc...  If anyone has the capability to clone, please let me know asap, it’d be much appreciated. 🙏 Together with some fellow dev friends, I’ve started to track the tasks I’ve accomplished day-to-day. Organizational tools can be helpful, but it’s also great to have some accountability with likeminded peers. When working on a creative project for so much of my time, it’s startlingly easy to lose the feeling of actually making any progress. 

My Tape deck of tasks & goals. Looking pretty wild. 😂

I’ve been looking over the scope of Covenant, and I have a lot of goals for it, but fear the dreaded burnout. Thankfully, I don’t feel it quite just yet, but it’s looming eerily. Sketching continues to be a wonderful creative warmup for me, at the very least.

Who dat? Who knows.

Chapter One is at 74%, hurray...? I finalized the list of backgrounds I need to make for the first chapter and it’s nearly twenty in total. A little startling to see it all listed in one place, but it did amp me up a bit. 

I will publish those lore posts soon, if it’s the last thing I do. 😤

The month of Nick has ended, so it’s time to introduce another love interest soon. Stay tuned. 🔥

Hmm, perhaps I should end this with some fun facts... Nick owns a car, but never uses it. It’s pretty old, but still reliable. Aleksandr doesn’t own a car since he has a driver to take him around the city. Eden owns a motorcycle and is quite aware that she looks very good on it.

As always, be kind to yourself and stay safe~

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 7.9.2020

Bit under the weather right now, so this one will be a quickie.

Chapter One is about 65% complete, which is great, but I would’ve had a lot more progress if I wasn’t constantly writing orphan scenes for future chapters. 🤔But it’s like that sometimes. I’m hoping to reach the editing phase soon!

A fair part of last week was dedicated to research too! As much as I enjoy writing the actual story, there’s a specific pleasure I get from the research process and discovery of new things. Perhaps it’s the hunt I enjoy the most.

Topics I researched included:

Coding

Languages

Germanic & Slavic fairy tales

Musical score

History of Blood in Medicine

And lots of other stuff I won’t get into just yet. 😏

Languages were really fun to research! All the LI’s speak primarily English, but they are familiar with other languages to varying degrees due to their upbringing.

Nick: Russian, Mandarin, French, German

Alek: French, Russian, German

Eden: Vietnamese

So! I promised that I would post character profiles! Well, keep an eye out for a certain sailor on the horizon later this week... 🌊

It’s a wild world out there. Please take care of yourselves and stay safe. ‘Til next time~

Love, Cygnette ✦

[cygnette]

DEV LOG 16.9.2020

Two days late, but here I am! 🙈

Chapter One writing phase is at about 70% as of today. Not a lot of progress since last week. I really need to set aside my perfectionist tendencies and leave it for the editing phase. You are introduced to all the RO’s in the first chapter, and it’s critical to set the tone just right. But to use a term coined by a veteran dev friend, I must embrace the potato draft. Potato draft is love. Potato draft is life. 

I realize I’ve been rather sparse with actual story details outside of the RO’s. I think it’s because I particularly cherish the element of surprise, especially when it comes to horror storytelling. I’m not one to be bothered by spoilers, but that moment of truly gasping at a moment in a story is always a great one. However, I do want to make an effort to share a bit more in regards to the lore of Covenant. Keep an eye out for some lore posts coming up~

Another reason for not making too much progress in writing is coding. While my primary goal is to write as much as I can, I absolutely can’t leave coding by the wayside, else it’ll bite back in a nasty way later on in development. Even though Covenant is not art-heavy, its DNA is interactive fiction, so the branching coding is extremely important, and I intend to include many choices throughout the game. Stats will play a huge role in the game as well.

I have MC Stats divided into two categories: Persona and Psyche. Persona stats represent your MC’s general personality traits, how others perceive her. Psyche stats make up her internal motivations, the virtues (or otherwise) that drive her mind and soul. The stats will be shown as a spectrum, for example: Temperance vs. Exorbitance. Later in the game, these stats will affect whether certain choices are locked or not.

On the graphics end, I recently purchased Clip Studio Paint because of the sale. I primarily use Procreate, but CSP opens a whole new world of possibilities for me. Although the game will not have sprites, there’s plenty of other art assets that I’ll need. So I’m setting time aside every week to get myself acquainted with CSP and some other new art programs. 

Here’s a sneak peek at a fun little thing I’m working on for Nick:

By the way, thank you so much for all the new followers! The support means more than you know. 💗

I have a couple asks to answer this week, so I hope you’ll enjoy. 😉

Stay safe and take care~

Love, Cygnette ✦