The weather gets warmer, and with it comes spring cleaning. And so does digital cleaning.

This month, I started pre-production for Chapter 3, but because pre-production is kind of boring to talk about, I have nothing to share about the following yet… But most of my focus was on cleaning and polishing Chapter 2, which was mostly the same process:

Play game > Find bug > Fix bug > Repeat. But through this process, I gathered up some cool material to share.

Get ready, this post will be a long one.

Clean-up calamity!

In my bug-squashing pursuit, I ran into some of the chapter’s older mechanics - a minigame that was designed around the story.

But hold up! BIG problem!! It used a system that I coded in but couldn’t finish due to time constraints  making it very neglected... And it was not something I could just leave for later. I had a playtesting build to get out and I wasn't having it!

Now I don’t consider myself a perfectionist, (or maybe i am lol) but that minigame... Sucked. It was genuinely awful and not only was it a slog to develop, but even playing through it was bad…

So I decided: “Hey, let’s delay the game’s playtest build so it’s actually playable and not a half-baked mess!”

With an exhausted sigh - and copious amounts of chocolate, I got to work…

Mechanics - Taking down the rust

For context, the minigame is supposed to be a mix of stealth mission and a choice-based interaction with different outcomes, similar to what you’d see in a western RPG. The player must select the correct choice that nets them a reward, else they are chased down and caught red-handed. Simple, right?

NOPE! The dialogue was horribly paced! The back-end was spaghetti and the maps... Oh man, the maps... They were too big and spacious for a stealth minigame, and that is not engaging, no matter how many characters I try to slap onto the grid.

Everything had to be reworked.

As a start, I settled for smaller, but compact layouts that suited a stealth level far better. I'll refer to these maps as "Rounds".

The new round designs focused on giving the player an incentive to use the added minigame's quirks, rather than running around a big but empty map to find dialogue that only lasts like... 10 seconds at best.

But these rounds couldn't come without their mechanics, which were also rusty! This mechanic operated only on TWO switches and ONE variable!!! I needed to find a way to fix this and fast! This is for you, fellow devs!

So I started to playtest. And with every test, I figured it out little by little - "Another switch here, another variable there, this one needs a common event, Tweak this one's timing, that trigger needs a change..." And eventually, while not too different from the original build, this minigame now operates on at least 9 switches, at least 2 variables,  11 common events, and at least 5 parallels for each round!

Now we are talking. There is proper infrastructure to work with. With the mechanics in place, I had a template to design the rounds around.

I learned this with time, but It's all order, order, order!!! Without order, the development will always be a mess!

Visuals - A fresh coat of paint

Now I don't know what I was thinking when I made the visuals, but for a place called "Cybercity", I made it look like an archaic bazaar! The irony!! Everything had to go out the window. It was time to experiment once again - but beyond just simply hyper-industrial or urban.

In my opinion, a touch of whimsy is often the key for a setting to look interesting. Theming, distinction and environmental storytelling help the audience identify a setting easily, so it was important for me to make every map (and not just in the minigame) stand out.

As an example, check out the images below:

For theming, I wanted Cybercity to be a modern, developed city leaning into the futuristic ideals, but not developed enough so that it is still grounded to a degree. You can see what I mean in images from my older posts, where different kinds of urban maps in the chapter were designed around this vision.

Distinction is another big factor when designing maps. If every map was the same dull street, I imagine it would be hard to tell where one is. For the project in general, some maps are complete visual whiplash while some are slow-burn transitions.

Environmental storytelling - I looooove this factor. It's such a fun way to show, not tell to the player about the world. Small details that are scattered around to give an area life, and show that the world does not entirely revolve around the protagonist. It marches on -  with or without them!

Dialogue - Choose your words carefully

My final obstacle was rewriting the dialogue in the minigame.

The original idea for the minigame's dialogue was to be shared through short "battles", where you'd have to beat the customer with financial damage. Whatever that means.

It was then scrapped and replaced with the choice-based system, but the lines were very... Lacking in substance. Here is an example of an early draft for the minigame's script:

Who the hell speaks like that? Sure, the story is supposed to be comical, but that does not make a natural conversation. A later draft lengthened their conversations, but that still didn't feel right. This redesign should hopefully do the characters justice!

Here is another example:

This is only a tiny snippet of the conversation (they wont drag out for too long dont worry). If the player must make a choice regarding a character, that character has to be explored a bit first.

Some conversations made me giggle reading them, and resulted in choices like this one:

I don't want to spoil how they'll go. Each one is a fun surprise to read through and should hopefully be engaging enough.

That should be all I can say about the minigame.

Quality of life and other overhauls

I also cleaned up many of the environments, lines, scenes, mechanics, menus, SFX, VFX, ect... Based on the development's new standards, the demo version does not represent the final game anymore. I also removed a couple of incorrect tags for the game page that suggested JAA:DD is a JRPG with a male protagonist, but this is simply not true.

The game will not have side quests, grinding or open world exploration, nor will it revolve only around our favorite gunslinger. Sorry about the confusion!

Here are some examples of what is changing:

Old - Cybercity's visuals

New - Cybercity's visuals

Old - Everyone is here!

New - Everyone is here!

Old - Chapter selection room

New - Chapter selection room

And these are all a tiny part of what's to come. 

As usual, do not expect a release date for the midpoint yet. I am not sure about it myself. Things can always change, and development can and will slow down at times.

I kind of doubt that I'll have anything to show by the next log, but only time will tell... Thank you for reading!

Until then,

Wanderer