Game Journal #124 - The Changes? They're Coming!

Hello hello! Welcome back... to my game journal series. It's been about 2 months since my last one. That's a long time. Well, I actually learned a lot of things that I want to change about my game. So I'll tell you about them!

First of all, I got this really cool fanart of Joe from my Strawpage. It's basically a place where you get anonymous drawings.

Note the heart. I'm pretty sure a girl drew this. Haha. Speaking of, I've gotten a few comments that Joe is attractive recently. Which makes me laugh, since I didn't design him to be that way. Oh well!

All right, what are the intended changes? I'll go over them!

1. Smaller Open World

On my two month break I played a few open world games. One was great (Clair Obscur Expedition 33) and one was terrible (Rune Factory 5.) A big part of why Rune Factory was a terrible open world game was because the map was HUGE. There was so much open space between everything for no reason! And to make it worse, the player character had a really slow running speed. It'd take you 5 minutes to go anywhere.

I ended up modding the game to make me walk 4x as fast, but even then there was just SO much open, empty space. It was extremely tedious to play! Then I realized: an open world doesn't need to be large. In fact, my first level falls into this same mistake (and it's why I'm having trouble modelling for it.) it's WAY too large!

If you played my game, think of how small the Detective Office is by comparison. It's small, compact, and easy to walk in. Adding more models to it was fun, because it felt like furnishing an actual room due to the size. So, I'm going to make the maps smaller. This may also make the game shorter, but hey. You're not here to play walking simulator. A short and sweet experience is better.

2. 2.5D Characters

This one's more of a reminder. I'm going to be replacing all the 3D characters with animated 2D sprites. In terms of player characters I need to do Joe and Dan the most, followed by the next party member who joins right after. It's gonna look good, trust me.

Uh, yeah, I think that's all. You know, when I started writing this I thought there were more changes, but I guess there weren't. Lol.

Well, it's crazy how fast time goes. How is it already July?! Unreal... well, all the more reason to work on the game more. As a side note, my art's gotten a bit better this year, which is always good. Making art friends helped a lot. Speaking of, I drew so many things unrelated to my game that I got tired of it. It's like... I want to be a game developer. That's my career choice. So that's what I want to be known for, too. I don't mind doing other stuff. But after a while I get bored of it, since making a project is my passion.

Oh yeah, I forgot, but my eyesight's gotten a bit better. I don't have that wavy distortion anymore which is great. Hopefully it doesn't come back, it made reading a headache. Haha. My next appointment is in August so we'll see.

Anyway, next time I'll have some stuff to show. I'm almost done with Joe's idle and movement. Then I'll do Dan's.