Greetings reader. Thank you for stopping by! I’m a hobbyist indie developer working full-time in foreign affairs. I released a visual novel before this was riddled with delays, bugs, and honestly, I’m not so proud of this product. In order to ameliorate this, I aim to track my process through Developer Diaries. I will be as transparent as I can be, as well as will accept any feedback.
Concept:
You are a high school student in a classroom getting bored form the teacher lecturing about the Battle of Manzikert (a fascinating tale I assure you). Combined with your lack of sleep last night, you start doodling on your notebook where you fall asleep and are teleported into the world of the your doodle. There in Doodleworld, you meet wonderful people like Love Interest, your very own waifu/husbando. As the Evil Empire advances into the beautiful Fantasy Town of the 7 5 Brothers, you, the HERO, the Self-Insert, must defend the poor denizens of FTo5B and take the fight to the Empire.
Game Design:
Self-Insert Draft will be a visual novel with several battle elements. I plan to have a battle system like that that was in the RPGmaker engine, of course with variations. Your relationship with the Love Interest (or other characters) will determine how the story functions.
Progress So Far:
UI

Using image buttons and learning some tricks from GIMP, I made a short but sweet, choose your avatar function. While I’m not so sure about the bottom GUI, and the standard textboxes yet, I will work more on this later.
Art

Using freelancers off of Fiverr, as well as friends, having been met throughout different epochs, I have assembled some art assets. As these diaries progress, I will do a Meet the X character.
Story
The classroom portion has been written. Since I actually don’t want to bore people with the classroom setting and Manzikert, the amount of dialogue in this section is relatively short (maybe 20 or so lines of dialogue). Currently, I am writing about the transition into Doodleworld (the tentative name)
Progress Last Week in Numbers:
Lines of Code: 500
Goals for Next Week:
Story:
- Finish transition into doodleworld
- Finish up the Elder Futhark section (ooh spooky)
Art:
- Work on drafts for line art backgrounds. I will see how capable of an artist I am, and if I cannot do the backgrounds, well, I’ll find someone who can.
Coding:
- Work on the battle system.
- Clean up Information Screens
Please tune in on Sunday for the next update!
From,
William Lucht