Devlog #5 - in which a guy who doesn't drink alcohol designs alcoholic drinks

i'm losing cool points for this one but yes, i (taylor) don't drink. and not even for cool reasons like my health or it interferes with a medication. i just don't like the taste. icky. makes me scrunch. which made the process of designing fun cocktails not difficult per se, but meant i had no idea what particular drinks are made from or what tastes good or if there's some secret rule to what can be served in which glass.

for inspiration, we looked a bit at the drinks they serve in japanese themed cafes. you know like, it's a kamen rider cafe and the drinks are the colors of their suits and the ice cubes are shaped like guns.

normal ice cube. we wanted them to feel fun and unique and not tied down to real established drinks (and by we i mean me. the original plan had been to make regular drinks with real recipes, but where's the fun in that! i want my drinks to be BLUE and have FLOATING TOYS!!)

the first step with the visual development was figuring out the art style for the drinks. how thick should the lines be? how detailed? this was my first attempt at making a glass that looks like a glass and a drink that looks like a drink. it's not terrible! but when i placed it against a screenshot, all the little details of the bubbles were lost. it's too detailed!

thus, i refined the style into the placeholder you already saw in leo's post. thicker lines, simpler, bolder shapes, and less reliance on gradients. looks much better!

now THAT's a video game item! but it's also not very unique or distinct. it's just a placeholder!

(safety sip, lucky ducky, totally legal, risque business, babe buster)

never let anybody tell you your concept sketches need to be neat. they don't. as i mentioned above, i really know Nothing about alcohol or alcoholic drinks. my primary focus was on making each of these drinks visually distinct and, if i could, give a clue as to what they'd do or tie in with their name. lucky ducky is the most obvious one, it gives joker better luck! and also there is a cute duck! because i love a silly garnish. risque business is green because it involves money and That's Pretty Much The Whole Thought. safety sip and babe buster are both blue because they both relate to busting. why blue specifically? blue looks good.

that is the level of visual development i am on. sometimes the drink is blue because it looks good if it's blue.

and here are our finished drinks! each of these actually has four phases: full, one sip, two sips, empty (except water, which is endless). i'll let you guys see those when you play the update, but i'm very pleased with how they came out. and! some of them got tweaks in the final stage of development. risque business got a penis shaped silly straw instead of a stirrer. babe buster gets an ice sphere. basically just trying to do whatever i can to make these feel unique and like Cool Items. lucky ducky is my favorite. i think it's joker's favorite too. his special little ducky.

we also moved joker to the left to make room for the drink in the UI, which has the added benefit of not covering up the leftmost girl as much. hooray! finally you'll be able to see rosalie's pussy from anywhere at the table. and at least one of prill's boobs.

with these done and imported, leo's back to work on the dialogue studio! that's going to enable a much, much more robust system of dialogue that i can't wait to play with. these girls are going to talk to each other. fantastic. we'll finally pass the bechdel test.

-TT

(PS, if you've never seen the girl drink drunk KITH sketch, now's a great time)