Jesse Lozano

How has the Month been for Stillness –

Direct work on Stillness did in fact see a bump, given the free time. overall it was more productive than the last few months, but no where near the level of production the summer was. A lot of it was also pre-production and planning for much much later narrative stuff, which is always fun..

What I said I would do (and did it get done) –

• Mock up more conversations scenes (sorta)
• Paper prototype the emotional control mini-games. (again, sorta)
• Refactor UI (Done)
• get 1 more puzzle from level 2 in completely (not done)
• filling in more flavor for the area (not done)
• Playtest (not done)

What got done-

so, given the fact that this was supposed to be a break, and I needed to relax, I went very free-form on what I needed to get done. I started with a basic list of goals. fixing the UI, refactoring the game’s opening, some quality of life fixes, etc.

The Ui fix was simple, but a bit time consuming, and massively necessary. it has really cleaned up the UI space, and by extension, a lot of the game (since like 50% of the game happens on the UI).

I added a couple of tech features which would be nice to have on my end, given the simplicity of the tasks. A CheckObject script, for example. it lets me easily allow for just multiple responses to clicking an object, for an evolving response. not sure where I’d use it, or in what capacity, but it was a simple task. Another quality of life fix was fixing a bug in autotyping, when it came to how it meshed with rich text. namely, it didn’t. it was resulting in a lot of prolonged sfxs, and misplaced pauses.

A Quality of life change that was massively needed, was adding a block feature to my node editor. previously, every line on screen would be shown in editor as an element in a list. this was useful for editing the many side elements, like pacing, but not so much for just writing, and adding things.

so, I added the block functionality, to allow for easy writing a lot of text in long form.

its a simple toggle-able property, and automatically adjusts the list form as needed, so it’ll be a massive improvement.

on the actual narrative side, I started fixing up the intro. playtesting had found some issues with how I was handling people starting and finishing the intro, and I finally arrived at a solution that should fix those issues.

to start, I added a visual for the opening dream sequence

(spoilers for the first 10 seconds of the game, by the way 😛 )

the second, and more important change, was reversing the order of the opening task, to open the front door. previously, how I had it was, once the player leaves their bedroom, a cutscene plays, leading them to the door, and once its finished, the player’s are supposed to go back to bed. too many players got confused on what to do after the cutscene ended, and a few were annoyed at the game taking control to walk them to the door.

the solution is a simple reversal, let the players walk to the door, and when they get to the door, a cutscene plays, which leads them back to the bed for them, and out of the intro segment.

 

this refactor is not entirely done to the capacity I want it to be, unfortunately, so that’ll need more work next month.

 

Time Spent –

not counting and pre-production time I spent:

• refactored UI for proper resolution/so it’d all be on one canvas – 3 hours
• added CheckObject, for multiple responses on checking – 2 hours
• fixed up auto-typing, so it accounts for rich text – 1 hour
• added text area functionality to line nodes – 1 hour
• made art for dream sequence – 4 hours

What to do next-

January starts with a bit of my break left, which I might get some work done. the rest of it, is naturally back to school, but the start of a semeseter is always the lightest. as such, I suspect I’ll be able to finish that intro refactoring. at least, on a basic capacity. there are some opening art assets I want to redo (namely the picture of the main character in bed), but that may or may not get pushed off. with that done, another round of playtesting is both required, and (hopefully) easy to attain.

then, the next goal, I feel, would be to finish Level 2 in its entirety. once its done (and it is close, just the puzzles are needed), I can get playtesting on that as well.

Once the intro and the mandala are done, and playtest ready, I can begin both level 3 (which includes the first real conversations), and adding polished touches to the first two levels.

 

so, in list form:

• Finish refactoring the intro
• Playtest
• Finish level 2
• Playtest
• adding polish to levels 1 and 2
• Stretch:
  • Start level 3
  • Mock up more conversations scenes
  • Paper prototype the emotional control mini-games.

Closing Notes-

well, I accomplished my new years resolution to do a monthly report on my progress on stillness every moth this year. it was a bit of a chore some months, but I did it.

I think I’ll keep doing this next year.

:3