i’m getting super excited for the release of the jptj demo!! congratulations and well done for all the hard work you’ve put in :D
i’m really curious about your process and the ins-and-outs of the project’s development so i wanted to know: has everything gone according to plan or have there been any surprises/unexpected challenges? if so, how did you work around them and how have they influenced the end result for better or for worse?
Hallo!! Thank you so much for asking me about this, I really had to think about it oo_oo;;…
I think the first maybe-not-so-obvious thing that surprised me was how fast a game-jam can go, whether you’re actively working every single day or just picking something up a little bit more leisurely! The game jam that JPTJ was originally based on was something that I had actively grinded out alongside my other real life commitments, and it really made me realise how little time I had in a day! (And how much of it I was spending doom-scrolling…)
It was one of my projects I went from “I am certain I am going to give up on it” to “I am utterly obsessed with it and I am going to expand this project far beyond what I originally scoped / expected for it.” I am not the luckiest person (especially not with technology / motivation) so I try to prime every story I have to be able to be put down and picked up again!
My next biggest surprise was realising that I had written a story that I definitely liked, but the original story wasn’t actually something I was interested in writing. Well, that’s a liiittle bit of a lie, I was definitely interested! But I realised I had actually secretly written a more interesting story in the subtext of the story I had written! It meant revamping, rewriting and changing a lot of things but it allowed me to look over my OC’s with fresh eyes and try push them!
I’m not the world’s most confident programmer, but passion can really turn you to do things you didn’t think were possible! I’ve definitely found myself looking over the code for JPTJ’s demo and outlining for myself where I could hopefully improve!
And of course, we can’t not discuss the elephant in the room. If you’re from the future, you probably already know that the demo unfortunately had itself lose some of it’s final polish as I unfortunately suffered a computer malfunction that caused me to lose 98% of my files! (Not very fun times, but oh well.)
This was definitely a very stressful blow, especially as I realised that the method I had tried to back my files up with actually wouldn’t be viable for refixing code, only for re-importing files (after a LOT of digging.) It’s only thank’s to the Renp’y discord that I was able to fix up my game to be playable (if missing some smaller features and other things! ::(((( ) I still do deeply cherish the demo for all the work that my talented team put in, but of course a part of me will remember my lesson and hope that I can do better next time!
There’s probably a lot more I could say about the final result and what led me where, but I think I should save that for a video in the future! (And if you’re from the future, hello!! If we still even SAY hello! 8_8…) Thank you for the question and the very delightful bunny GIF!!!
