YEAR TWO: 2023
By this point, with the vertical slice demo script still not finished
on her end, Liana and I had begun brainstorming about the combat demo.
Several brainstorming sessions have taken place, but Liana hadn’t begun
writing the script in the Google Docs, which was the repository we were
using.Song had been struggling with the NPC art and Liana isn’t
confident she’ll be able to finish it, but I feltl that the character
generator would go a long way towards alleviating some of those issues.
In the December update which was posted on my channel the last week
of December, but wasn’t posted on Kickstarter by Liana until the first
week of January, I fill the backers in on the character generator, and
they get a peek at the new Beelzeboob sprite which I finished over the
holiday break.
Since we were pivoting to the combat demo as its own
story, and Beelzeboob wasn't going to be featured in it (only Boy,
Solomon, the Princesses and Maus were supposed to be playable in the
combat demo as per the script), I put the task of making her combat
sheet aside for when we'd pivot back to the main demo.
It is
important to acknowledge this shift: The main focus of work went into
the vertical slice demo, until Liana became stuck in the 4tress puzzle.
Then there was a swerve towards producing the combat demo.
January and February saw me beginning the work on Princess
Sparklepony's second combat system- the dance fighting system which I
ended up calling Prance Prance Convolution, which was a riff on all the
DDR machines that were inescapable in malls during the 2000s.
Remember malls?
Anyways, at this time I also laid out the map for the first section of
the combat demo. At this point Liana still hadn't begun the demo script-
the official document file wouldn't be created by her until September.
We talked back and forth on Telegram regarding the contents and ideas
for the demo but she didn’t start the official script at that time.
To complement the fact that in the early vertical slice demo, it's just
the princesses until they reach the Shimmering City. Sparklemuffin is a
non-combatant, so Pony needed to be able to take the brunt of offense in
a significant way, while you learned to keep her alive using
Sparklemuffin's magical songs. The magical poop flinging was a
complement to that system that allowed to hit your enemy with debuffs,
which weren’t in Sparklemuffin’s inventory, and which you wouldn't
really get until you unlocked other party members like Armand.
The mechanic was balanced in such a way that performing the dances was
expensive in magic points, but you could replenish them by draining the
soul of your enemies- but only for as long as they themselves had magic.
With each soul devoured you also got magic poop to use as a throwable
weapon that also applied status effects.
Pony's real strength was as an alchemist, so her melee attacks wouldn't
be as strong as the others in the game, but they were ok for the earlier
game. Later on, you'd be able to supercharge her dance attacks when you
unlocked her final class upgrade.
February had some more progress as well, with the work on the dance
combat system. I had to start from scratch since the system was
different from Sparklemuffin's system, this version used keyboard or
controller directional inputs. Originally, there was talk of making it a
timed rhythm section for each dance, but it was decided that it would
prolong combat length, and that it might also pose certain difficulties
for players with coordination issues.
February was a slower month due to preparations to travel for my best friend's
wedding. Asher and I drove to Arkansas and spend a week there, and
Liana flew in and joined us there. We all stayed at my friend's aunt and
uncle's place in preparation for the wedding.
Throughout March, the cosmetic upgrades to the character portraits began.
Princess Sparklepony’s dance fighting mechanic was further refined and
the combination of dances was pared down. The original number of
potential combinations would have been too overwhelming for the players,
but by tweaking the system so that the system grabbed what three keys
had been pressed during the combo instead of the specific order, the
total number of dances shrank to a manageable 20. Now that the mechanics
were coded in, it was time to add the cosmetic finish.
The second person in the dev chat is not a dev, but a friend and voice
actress who was going to be a playtester and also provide the singing
voice for Princess Sparklemuffin. She was present in the chatroom
throughout most of the development process.
The reason the chatroom currently lists only 2 members is because, as soon as Kerzner released the cancellation video which was rife with inaccuracies and lies, I ejected her from the chatroom to ensure she could not delete evidence. The chat has, since then, been exported in its fullest alongside the team chats with the artists, about which Kerzner has also made false statements (as will be seen in an upcoming session.)
At this time, I was also implementing elements into the combat system
through the Visustella plugin system. Liana had suggested the ability to
engage in verbal battles during combat in some instances, for example,
so the ‘Parlay’ add-on plugin was acquired. I will list all of the
plugins and what function they performed further into the video. But
every plug-in purchase was approved by Liana, and it was always preceded
by me explaining what functionality it could cover which, otherwise,
might have cost a few hundred dollars to commission otherwise, or
increase development time even more since I’d have to figure out how to
create them myself.
By this point, the combat system was becoming
sophisticated, with the ability to see enemy and player turns, and use
skills and other tactics to change the turn order of enemies and allies,
to add an extra layer of tactical finesse to combat encounters.
In March, Liana also relieved Song from her volunteer position to make the NPCs. A new volunteer by the name of Mara took her place. If you’re keeping count, this would be the third volunteer that cycled into the project after another one had left.I am not sure if calling Mara a volunteer is accurate, since Liana told me that she was trading LianaKares sessions in exchange for Mara creating the backer NPCs. This was also the situation she had with Song.
When Mara was on-boarded, I walked her through the particulars of the generator. As with Song, I tasked Mara to ping me directly if there were any issues for which she may have needed my guidance.
Derailment
What
time I didn’t spend manning my battle bridge, I spent sending out
resumes for hours on end. It was a dry job market, and a few friends who
were in a similar position reported very similar results as well- it
seemed to be common for companies to put out job advertisements, reject
all candidates and then turn inwards to re-distribute the burden across
existing employees, having done their performative show of advertising
for positions.
I had two friends on the other side of the equation,
where their job burden seemed to increase without a concomitant rise in
pay after another round of job postings yielded no results. It was
puzzling because I knew people were applying for positions all over the
place, but the predominant narrative was that nobody apparently wanted
to work.
Fortunately, at the end of September I was able to interview for a
company and was able to obtain a seasonal position with the possiblity
of becoming permanent. Training began in October, and at this point I
essentially threw myself into trying to outperform the role to guarantee
an invitation into the permanent team.
I voluntarily accepted 12 hour
shifts after training was done and worked through holidays. I told Liana
that, once I was able to secure a permanent position, I would resume
work on the game.
The December update outlined all of that, and
showcased some of the work I’d been doing in between trying to find a
job and between being fried from 12 hour days: a glowed-up introduction
sequence and a brand new opening cutscene in the style of the Sierra
On-Line quest games.
