#indy dev

[litsenn]

A friend of mine has been working for a while on an indy game about alienation at work. It's a company simulator, all hand-drawn, with an amazing artistic direction (which perfectly reflects my friend's art style), eccentric characters and a powerful message. Please, wishlist it on Steam!

No Pacing when the Client is Here on Steam

Greetings New_Employee. Your task in the Company: serve the Client. Follow the instructions, build productive relationships with your collea

And if you could answer those few questions, it would really help them!

[jjeinn-tae]

Apocalypse... Averted?

So, I had March 23rd listed in my calendar as "Apocalypse Commences" which seems to be cancelled at this point. So, good news for me actually getting to do the series I've announced. It started with the 22nd kind of having a disaster, which stopped part of the apocalypse, and then over the week the dominoes from that landed in a way that "Oh yes, I'm definitely getting to stay living in my current residence" which was kind of up in the air until, um, Thursday I think?

There's still a bit of settling down that needs to happen, but my cough is finally going down (It's been months) and I am getting nights to myself again. It's looking like soon is an accurate description for the first Journey Through Loguo dev video!

Honestly, I really need to find a better name than the working title. Like, yeah, referencing Journey to the West for a Zelda clone with a more Chinese theming than the European of Zelda is fun for a working title. But like, "The Legend of Zelda" has such a kick to it in its simplicity. And my primary audience is English speaking and probably doesn't exactly have a sure idea on how to pronounce Loguo. But I have a single character name decided so far, and I don't know if I really want to copy the template of LoZ's name anyways. Besides, Legend of Locca is a definite "no" because like, while I enjoy the sound it really doesn't have a shortened form that would be good to use, LoL is kind of already in use. Is that even something to worry about with a little indy project? Kind of, but like, in a "kind of aiming high there, aren't you?" sort of way.

[jjeinn-tae]

Recovering Life

Hey everyone, it's been a while. Around mid-October I announced my getting started on recording. And to be fair, I did get everything set up that day for it. Everything was ready to go, got my N64 controller hooked up to my computer, as Journey Through Loguo is honestly going to be built to be playable on one, although of course supporting controllers made this century!

However, what really caused this new direction in my game development (which, coincidentally, it turns out I made the first post on it in August when this all started I had no idea I was remapping so quickly) is basically life collapse. Since August, things have not been good, and honestly getting worse as it's gone on. My social life basically fell apart in August, and then as time has gone on, deaths in the family, losing my social circle at work, work *incoherent gesturing*, being bedridden for half of a month over the last two, and losing a roommate so like, how do rent?

Throughout February though, and more so now, I've felt I've finally caught a foothold and can actually start doing things again. This month is currently frantic preparation for a new roommate if we find one, but when that calms down, and I have an evening to myself, I am making my video.

I haven't spoken about it much, because honestly I haven't had time, but I have continued to learn more about Godot, mostly idle tinkering as I get ready for work. Have I mastered it? Of course not, it's been... Ugh, 7-ish months of light tinkering. But I in theory know how to do everything I plan to do with Journey Through Loguo presently.

I wanted to throw the concept art I've been doing of our protagonist, Locca, into this announcement. But in addition to the lack of time, I've only been like, halfway into the art headspace at best here, so she's just rough lineart that only kind of shows a vague idea. I'm not going to put any of that out until like, I have a face at least that is more than "outlines of eyes, nose is here, here's a mouth." I was always planning on having her concept art done after the first video anyways, because she's just going to be a little capsule at the beginning as I build the "move through the world" parts of the code first.

So, video hopefully in April, finally. Sorry for my absence, I really appreciate all the support I've received on here over the years.

[jjeinn-tae]

Recording Onwards!

So, I have the apartment to myself, and I have learned Godot enough to start my dev vlog series on the Journey through Loguo, as I guess I'll call it for now still. I work tomorrow, so I am not entirely sure that I can finish recording tonight, but we'll see where I get!

For my first session, beyond talking a bit about the various free engines around for people to pick (only very briefly!), I am planning on basically setting up the basic N64 Zelda controls, primarily focused on getting the context button working. I have ideas for that and it shouldn't be too hard, honestly. So yeah, I think I have a shot at finishing tonight, at least.

[jjeinn-tae]

Godot Tutorials Complete

I have finished the tutorials for Godot, and I am very happy with some of the utility that is already obvious to me here!

Honestly, the only thing I am currently "missing" from Unity is the whole "animation layer" system. It was nice to be able to have multiple animations playing for an entity at once in J'ardscape, so that the arms and legs could be up to different things. Also those blend trees so it seemlessly shifts between running and walking... So far I haven't seen an obvious way for that to happen in Godot, but the 3D tutorial wasn't exactly all that involved with regards to animation.

While that'll mostly be important to figure out with when I inevitably port J'ardscape over to Godot, it is something that I would like for my video devlog project. Like, the idea is that it's a theoretical N64-era game, sure, but... The best part of retro-design is taking the nice things that you remember about those old games, but being able to skirt a bit on the exact limitations. Like, I think animation bones weren't quite a thing yet, but I am sure animating Locca with them...

But like, blending animations wasn't really a thing back then, I think, so like... If I want Locca to put her weapon away while moving, I suppose I can make a unique animation for that as opposed to scripting an extra animation to override her arms or something? But we'll see as I dive in further.

And yes, name drop of our little protagonist for the not-Ocarina of Time, currently being called "Journey to Loguo" I guess. I look forward to making our first dev video where she almost assuredly will just be a little gray capsule.

[jjeinn-tae]

Drive, Returns

So, as I recover from my illness here, I am happy to find that my... drive to do things has finally returned, for the first time on a consistent basis since the hospital. It's been a "good" six months, and I finally feel capable of actually working on my game dev stuff. Like, more than just the dev video that I've been thwacking at here and there. I had a craving to play some D&D again late one night, and pulled out a side-side project I've had for a few years or something that is basically "roguelike out of a tabletop rpg ruleset" and just kind of made sure that was functioning and tinkered a bit more with it.

But like, I want to work on my games that I can actually share. So onward and such!

[jjeinn-tae]

So, I actually started being able to do things like, a week or two ago, and thus I got to getting my apartment to be not in complete disarray. I also have finally gotten the clear to go back to work, and I worked two days this week, called out yesterday on my birthday due to absolute exhaustion, and slept like 16 hours. And then today I slept a ton too, I'm so tired.

But, this allows me to kind of get to a normalish schedule again, which means it is easier to find times to actually work on my devblog stuff! I didn't want to sneak ahead outside of my videos that I'm trying to get out, so I opened up a side project the other day and did a very vague laying out of my own take on Minecraft I guess. Since I wanted to do something at least. Honestly, I probably should have pulled J'ardscape open though.

Um, here's to hopefully more activity soon though!