Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-08-16

It's the Friday Rambles.

Life Stuff

I've been going to bed late for various reasons, mostly due to trying to finish this Tokyo Game Show demo of the new story chapter for Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines. But I'm still exercising and stuff. I slept in a couple days ago, which I almost never do, so I musta been pretty tired.

Merch Stuff

Nothing new here, although next week I'll have to start thinking about making stickers and prints for TGS before it's too late to get them made in time.

Gamedev Stuff

TGS is in a little over a month, so this week I blasted through remaining story and dialogue that I needed for the demo.

I focused on the first 15 minutes of the game. Of course, since the contents of the first 15 minutes of the game also depend on the remaining whatever else of the game, I also wrote a bunch of the remaining whatever else of the game, too. But, against all odds, I've finished a first draft of the demo and have built a version for loc testing, barely on schedule. And lo and behold it's actually a lot more than 15 minutes worth of game.

Above: I forget if I posted this screenshot before, but some of the more interesting ones from this week are pretty spoilerific

I added a timer to the corner of the screen for the TGS build.

It turns out having a timer counting down while you're trying to read is super distracting, so it's gonna be hidden til the last two minutes remaining. It also turns out 15 minutes is simultaneously a pretty long time, and not that long at all. I was able to play through the intro and a couple scenes past it, which didn't include most of the office, or any phone calls. So that helped me focus my attention on the parts I could even get to within that time. And if there's a queue at the booth the timer will be shortened to 7 minutes, but... I'm not gonna expect that.

I think total gameplay wise with just the demo, you can get 30+ minutes out of it. Once I plug in the cut non-demo content it'll be well over an hour's worth of stuff. And once it's finished it'll be even more than that. Of course, I estimated 2 hours for the original game and it turned out to be like 6-10 for completionists. Anyway...

When the timer reaches 0, the game shows a cool ending screen with all the info someone might need to buy the game from their phone, right then and there. And then follow me on Twitter, of course.

I'm also planning on adding an admin panel of sorts so the booth staff can adjust the timer based on the queue, turn various features (like the exit button or bonus unlocks) on and off, and reset functionality so all the settings and save files are returned to defaults when someone new starts the game.

Other stuff planned: add the bonus gallery and pre-populate it with some cool arts that showcase different parts of the game, so people can see beyond what is not particularly a visually snazzy intro. All this stuff will be added while the script is away on translation leave.

After writing a bunch of endings, I felt like it would be cool to have a quick way to get to your autosave so you can retry your last choice, if you didn't happen to save.

This button is the result of a long and difficult process in which I implemented a whole fancy pinned saveslot thing that was confusing to use while also being messy to code. I ripped everything out and made this instead. It's actually much prettier and simpler and easier to use and incredibly obvious what it does. UX...

And while doing script revisions, a new title came to me, so this is the new working title.

Above: Included some TGS specific visual flair

I might change it later, though. Dreams and Deadlines was previously called "I Dream of Tiger-chan" and then "Endless Monday: Dream of Deadlines" for the longest time, after all.

Above: Still better than this title

Above: Timer ran out, but it doesn't do anything right now. It will show a fancy ending screen

I drew some new CGs that I think are pretty good but they're omega spoilers so I'm not gonna share those lol. But I'm pretty proud of them, so you'll just have to trust me.

 Above: Friendly barrier for explaining that the game isn't done yet

I played through the current build and I'll need to fix the pacing a bit for the next revision. I'll probably shorten up the intro a bit to skip a bunch of dialogue and info that might not be necessary for the demo content, so people can actually see the demo content. There's a lot of setup for stuff that comes much later.

Above: It's not that this conversation hasn't been written yet!

I had to cut out a lot of content that I wouldn't have gotten done in time, and some of it's supposed to be accessible near the start of the game, but there's a bunch of other stuff you can do.

I'll probably be rearranging a lot of story stuff once all the locations and conversations are done. The challenge comes from the non-linearity of how the player can explore the game, and making sure everything still fits well together and continuity is preserved.

For this demo, though, I think it's more important to showcase the visuals and general vibe, which I think I've done... (I still have a month to massage it a bit, although it will annoy the heck out of my translator).

The End

That's it for now. Thanks for your support, as always! Next week I'll be working on the localization of the demo build, as well as fixing up the script and drawing like 10 CGs that I put in placeholders for in the demo. I might also implement the bonus gallery. Okay, see you!