When Stars Collide - Unofficial Ramble (again!)

Just posting another unofficial ramble about WSC, my side project. Because the side project is still there and I'm still tinkering with it in my free time!

Since my last update I have:

1. Obtained all the BGs (for now - there are always stragglers that I realise I need later.)
2. I have made some adjustments to the sprites since my last post. I drew alternate outfits for many of the sprites, made some detail adjustments (such as giving Noel a tattoo and enhancing Daaz's bioluminescence. And I created some additional hairstyles for the MC.)
   1. MC's hairstyles are a point of on-going stress for me. I think I finally settled on having eight in the game. But......which ones? I've done like 13-14 of them. It's hard trying to find versatile hairstyles that work on both face shapes. So I keep being frustrated at the ones I've done and working on new ones. (I think I ranted about hairstyles in my last post too.)

(Also, I still don't actually have this page set up. Rofl)

3. I also ranted about the game structure, which also continues to be a point of frustration for me. I have slightly altered my strategy for writing which has helped me progress further in the story. But once again, the rigidity and limitations inherent in this story structure have reared their heads. And once again I find myself struggling to justify including certain plot paths because they are annoying to write and difficult to manage branching-wise.
I realise more and more why developers who write games in this structure make the game design choices they do. Often the options are:
 - have annoyingly complex branching and risk continuity issues.
 - write the character as extremely indecisive and bland as they teeter back and forth between 'paths'
 - reduce the possible paths and overall story-significance of the choices so that the writing flows smoother.

None of these are enjoyable options to manage, honestly. I constantly find myself looking for ways to simplify without compromising an enjoyable experience for the players.

One of the most frustrating aspects of writing any project is not being satisfied with the quality but not letting that frustration sap your motivation. This is an issue in any project. I like to call it "perfectionist block" - it's when we can feel a project isn't coming together the way we want and it tends to make us feel stuck in the writing. Why continue to write a project that I'm not happy with.

The only way to combat perfectionist block is to remind yourself that writing is a process with well-defined 'steps' - one of which is writing the zero draft (or what I like to call the potato draft) and several of which involve revising that draft to make it incrementally better.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is a potato draft for a game that is in a structure I'm trying out for the first time and it's okay if it's janky at first because I will fix it on subsequent drafts. Most of the best moments I write are developed in the revision stage.

Good ideas often don't spring forth fully form, they're built off of existing content. So that is how I'm slooooowly going through writing this project. Of course, I also work on it for just a few hours after 10 PM each night so.....it's not like I'm spending hours a day on it anyway. That's the other reason it's "sloooow". 🤣

It *is* around 200,000 words right now. =o And I still have no idea how big it will be when it's done. Rofl!

In addition to continuing to write this project little frustrating snippet after snippet...I've been working on feature and UI design.

This is a game where I kind of want to try out a few new ideas. Some new features entirely. All are meant to address things I find lacking in visual novel game design.

Like in Gilded Shadows, I want to have a flowchart, which I think I've mentioned. Flowcharts, for me, serve several purposes. The first is just helping the player see where they've travelled through the narrative and where they have yet to travel.

But I also feel that flowcharts communicate to the player the level of branching inherent to the story.

I also have a lot of ideas relating to the affinity metres or affinity notices. Because I have a lot of thoughts, in general, about how poorly visual novels (including MY OWN) handle signposting and directing the player through the narrative. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of diegetic ways to do this, which means relying on extra-diegetic methods to inform the player how their choices are affecting things.

Even if we rely on things like metres and affinity check marks, etc - that doesn't mean these features will actually be all that useful. So I've been working on ways to make them more functional.

Oh! I also changed the UI font. This probably seems like something really minor but fonts can be so frustrating. I really wanted something that felt futuristic but did not look like the usual blocky "Futuristic" font. That was why I liked the previous font (called Canis Minor). Unfortunately, that font was really wispy and didn't have any bold variants so it ended up being a bit hard to see in some of the UI (such as in buttons or just normal text).

I needed something that was a bit heavier. And I found this new font that I ended up really liking:

(Side note: But the title screen is still really stark right now and honestly I think I'm just going to leave it this way because I don't want to fuss with a new design and I kind of like that it looks mysteeeeerious. *wiggles fingers*)

For anyone worried, this is obviously not the font of the actual text in the game. Text font is, of course, simpler and more readable.

With this project, I just kind of tinker with it here and there, messing with this screen or that screen or just writing 500-1000 words a night.

Ideally, I would like to have the rough draft done by the time the Gilded Shadows art book and lore book release (sometime after Yuu's route is complete) but at the rate I'm going that seems...unlikely. 🤣🤣

But it's still fwumping along as a project, little by little so I'll continue to post little rambles about it here and there.