Currently listening to: VA-11 HALL-A OST

My prediction in the previous post came true, art is truly the largest obstacle for me. The reason being because I spend so much time on each individual piece until it is at the standard I'm happy for people to see. This means no rough sketches or outlines, the place-holder art is pretty much of a release quality. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. On one side it means I am only showing good quality work I've produced, on the other hand, it takes so much time to get it to that point.

The first day of the week, I started with the UI design. I thought if I knew what the rest of the UI looked liked it would better direct where I went with the rest of the assets (tea, extras and tea cups). At the end of that day, I had something nice but it wasn't quite right for a tea salon feel. For the first design, I tried an aged paper look with flourishes on the edges but was informed that the UI looked more like it was for an adventure rather than a tea party. With that, I changed to make the UI resemble a dainty invitation, similar to what you would expect to receive if invited to high tea. The second UI, which is the one I decide to use, took the second day to design and implement. It was at this point where I thought I was making quite good time, as on that second day I also had to fix up a couple of bugs in my code. 

On the third day was where the momentum slowed down when I started on drawing the tea cups. Upon starting I had a clear idea of what all the cups were going to resemble, I had some reference images for when I was deciding the recipes, however, what I initial planned as just a rough sketch soon turned into a fully coloured and texture image. I started with the first cup, which I thought at the time, would be the most difficult cup to draw due to the texture and material the cup was supposed to composite. This cup took two days to draw, partially because I used Illustrator instead of Photoshop so I was still learning as I was drawing and because while I was putting on the finishing touches, the program crashed while saving and corrupted the last save, meaning I had to redo a lot of the texturing again. The second cup took a day to draw, I used a lot of what I had learnt the previous days and put them into use for the second cup. On that day I also decided to outline all of the remaining cups, to help quicken the process. The following day I spent three hours on the third cup, again I was able to increase my pace because of what I had learned with the previous two cups. Unfortunately, at this current rate, I won't be able to finish all the art needed for the game and be able to add the extra gameplay mechanics I had initially planned. 

I know if I didn't have to worry about the art I would easily be able to achieve everything I wanted for this project. I was hoping I could just quickly put some art together and move on but like everything else I do I am not going to show it to anyone if it is not to my standards and what is the whole point of this exercise if at the end I don't let anyone see what I'm capable of.

Currently Listening to: Let's play Mario and Luigi: Partners in time by Pharaoh2091

I'm half way through the month so I decided to reveal what I have been working on, a Tea Making Simulator/Visual Novel. The work isn't so far from what I did on the previous project, but it is different enough to give me something to new to try and program. The base mechanics are randomly being assigned an order to follow and cycling through the various options until the options match the current order. From this, I plan to extend the project to include a visual novel element whereupon the player completing the correct order is then treated to a small cut-scene with whoever placed the order. The more orders you complete for the one person, the more back story is revealed.

So my current status on the project is that I've finished the base build of the project. This includes changing the options to make the tea (tea type, extras to include, and teacup selection), the randomizing recipes to be assigned to the recipe cards, and the submission button to check if the recipe is correct but I haven't programmed in the visual novel aspect that I mentioned earlier. The reason being is I want to get the base art done for the project perform delving into the more complex programming. The whole point of this one month project was to see how much of an entire project could I get done not just one aspect.  

Next week I plan on focusing solely on art, beginning with the UI and then moving on to the items. I'm a bit concerned about the art as I believe it is what will take up most of my time. Unlike in programming, there is no clear indication of when the art is finished, and myself being a tad of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my own art, I find it quite hard to stop and move on to the next. I get caught up on trying to improve each one and adding the time spent together has me running behind in my schedule. Hopefully, since I'm aware of this being an issue and know I want to get all of the base art done by the end of the week, I will be able to be less concerned about making it perfect and just get the work done.

After that MIGW will be almost upon us, meaning that I will most likely be quite busy so I'm dedicating that last week to try and implement the Visual Novel portion and write the characters backstories. I doubt I will be able to but I hope that I'll be able to include some rough sketches of the characters as well, but I said it's not important.

I'll probably post again sometime next week discussing and showing some of the rough art I produced. Maybe if I show the art it will hasten the process for me.

Currently Listening to: LoZ: Wind Waker Speedrun by Chaotic_Ace - SGDQ 2015

It's October! The start of a new month and since the High Tea Games project is currently on hold, I decided to start work on a solo piece of work. Also, I'm going to try and set up some more goals for myself, regarding practicing art and writing. 

The new project I've just started has been an idea that has been circulating around my head for about a year or so and is fairly different from the projects I have worked on thus far. Most of the games I have designed recently are all some type of adventure game, focusing on designing ways to display information to the player and producing puzzles that rely on the player's retention of said information. It has been a while since I designed more mechanic based gameplay, where the game isn't so reliant on the player's thinking.

That being said the game I am working on currently still does have the player needing to retain information, only this time there is a lot more interaction the player can be going through while processing the information. I will probably elaborate on what the project is later on as I have a basic idea of what the game is but haven't fleshed it out enough to a point where I can start writing on all the mechanics planned.

I plan to complete the core game elements within a month. As this project is quite small in scope I hope it will serve as some kind of test of my abilities. I want to see how capable I actually am of making a small game on my own without any outside motivation, just me and my dedication. I want to have the system working smoothly, basic graphics and maybe some simple sound design.

So, what are my goals for this month?
~ Complete base mechanics of the new project: As I've said above I want to test my limits a bit to see what I can and can't do and understand where the problems lie if there are any.
~ One page of sketching per day: This month I'll focus on pose construction eventually get to a point where I can place the faces I can draw on to size appropriate bodies. 
~ 4 posts to the blog: These have to be detailed posts about any subject matter related to my work. Some weeks it can be an analysis of a game/puzzle/mechanic, other weeks it could be  a recap of what I've been currently working on. 
~ Re-establish my work schedule: Due to my family being on holiday recently I lost my regular schedule so it's my aim this month to re-establish it once more, working 4 days a week from 9am - 4pm. I have the weekends and Wednesdays off, however, I feel I may change this to Thursday's as that's the day I often go to see Pritika (the other member of High Tea Games) and I find in those mornings I don't often get much work done.

These goals are all to do with improving myself as a game developer, whether it be through improving my art, programming or even understanding of design. Through meeting these goals I hope to be a better developer.