#game dev blog

Delve into the depths of the Pediatric ward with Angitia, coming in the full game!

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Hi guys, a lil battler filled update today!

I’ve attached some of the WIP Idle frames of some enemies and a nice wip screenshot of how battle is currently looking!

I also just noticed the blog has reached a little over 100 followers and just want to thank any of you who have kept up with the project as it mills along!

Many kind thanks to you all!

That’s all for now, until next time!

February update!

This month, we’ve continued to work on getting the next private beta ready. Current major task progress:

• Finish all the new poses sprites needed(100% - DONE!)
  
• Finish updating the dialog/interaction system to use new character pose/location flags(100% - DONE!)
  
• Implement the character events on the game maps. (~15%)

With the latest iteration of the interaction system out of the way, my main focus has switched to adding the character events to the game maps. There are over 300 maps in the game, over 700 unique switches for NPC locations, and a collective total of more than 4000 individual “poses” Wishbone’s NPCs can occupy on those maps. Suffice to say, putting down all those character events is no small feat! However, the eventing process is an absolute cakewalk compared to creating sprites for and writing amusing, coherent, and typo-free dialog for each of those “poses”–the two tasks we just finished. :P

Additionally, our talented artist has finished updating the player character portraits! The original ones were made quite early on in the project, and some of them really showed their age… especially in comparison to all of the fancy new NPC portraits. They’ve been spiced up and diversified a bit more, and all of the alternate makeup and facial hair customization has been improved, too.

Anyway, another month down! I’ve been going full tilt on Wishbone for well over 3 months at this point… to the detriment of some other areas of my life, in fact. :P Can’t wait for all this schedule stuff to be done so that I can give my apartment the deepest deep clean it’s ever had!

Well, happy February Update, everyone!

This will probably be the last update before the public beta/demo is released. Barring any weird happenings, we should have that ready next month. The time draws near! …It’s kind of terrifying, actually! As a reminder, the beta will be a mostly complete vertical slice demonstrating the first season of the game (around 8-12 hrs of gameplay, give or take). I do expect it to have some bugs, but we have made an effort to get it as bug-free as possible. It should be less buggy than a Bethesda game, at least. :)

So, with that so close, let’s meet some of the townspeople! These are just a few of the characters you’ll meet during Spring of Year 1.

Mr. Whitfield arrives in town on the same wagon you do… and gets robbed by the same bandit gang that robs you. As he tells hit, he’s a photographer who has come out here to Wishbone to take photos of the prairie.

Nikki’s family owns Vanderdash Farm, the other farm in town. She’s a hard-working farm girl about the player’s age, and her (and her dogs) are some of the first friendly faces the player will meet in town. She’ll sell you animals and farm equipment if you need it. Though she’s a little awkward around most people, she really comes alive when talking about animals–especially dogs.

The nervous, bookish town schoolteacher, Ms. Wilson, is a bit of an outlaw apologist. It’s just… some of those outlaw guys are just so handsome, you know? Handsome and misunderstood… she’d just love to meet one someday. When she’s not teaching class or hanging out with Nikki, she can often be found standing in front of the town Bounty Board, swooning over the wanted posters.

A few days after you arrive in town, you’ll find yourself invited to Mayor North’s office for… for what, exactly? You’ll just have to see. He’s a proud man, known to be rather temperamental and difficult to get along with. Will you win his favor, or make yourself a powerful enemy?

According to townspeople, the dubiously competent Sheriff Pilgrim spends more of his time napping at his desk and admiring his shiny badge in the mirror than he spends fighting crime. He takes a liking to the player when they first arrive in town, though it’s quite possible his view of you will change with time…

Tobias works as the sullen, sarcastic cashier of the Jia Family General Store. He’s not the friendliest fellow around, but he’s a hard worker and seems to care a lot about his family… even if he sometimes feels frustrated that his sisters don’t help out more. He seems to crave something more than the current life he’s living…

Stop by Bordelon Saloon and you’ll probably see Barbara waiting the tables. She owns the place along with her husband, Rufus. Friendly, bubbly, and about as dense as the rocks she collects, Barbara is always happy to chat–unless she’s working. But if she’s not working, she’ll happily talk your ear off, and maybe even challenge you to a drinking contest.

An orphan girl with a sharp wit and sharper tongue, it’s easy to get the feeling that Em knows a lot more about goings on than she’s willing to admit. What her hidden agenda is–if it exists at all–remains to be seen, but perhaps you’ll get a chance to speak with her before the demo is up…

Mike is the leader of Mike’s Gang, the bandit group that robs you and Mr. Whitfield when you first arrive in town. He hightails it back to his secret gang headquarters after robbing you, so you probably won’t see him again for a while. Even Ms. Wilson doesn’t seem to like him very much, so he must be a pretty unpleasant dude.

October Update! Better late than never, eh?

So, the big announcement for October is that all cutscenes and quests for Spring year 1 are done! The entire first chapter of the game can be played in a near complete state. The screenshots above show a few of the events that occur in Spring Y1.

It was sent off to our private bug testers near the end of October, and since then I’ve been iterating between fixing reported bugs and fleshing out flavor text, random NPC dialog, and other little quality of life things and minor cleanups we want in the public beta. Once I’ve reached a satisfactory level of bug-free-ness and non-essential content, I will fork the project into two versions–private dev version and public version–and begin working specifically on preparing the public beta for release.

As for me, I’ve continued to be super busy–too busy with real life to keep up with internet communication, really–but things have cleared up enough that I can pretty reliably slot Wishbone work back into my schedule and have been able to do so for a good stretch of weeks. Still not back up to the levels I was doing in early summer, but I’m working my way back up.

See you in… uh, a few weeks, since this update was so late. :P

September update! Here’s a screenshot of my work area while testing a cutscene.

Not a ton to report, just continuing to plug away at the remaining Spring cutscenes. I just finished writing the code/plugging in the script for the last one yesterday–going to be testing it and fine-tuning it today and tomorrow. After that, there’s a bit of additional dialog to add in, and then the game will go back to our private beta testers for troubleshooting.Once we’ve found and stomped out most of the bugs, the main goal will switch to prepping the game files for the Spring Y1 public beta release… at long last.

I have still been pretty busy with life stuff and have unfortunately been unable to prioritize Wishbone as highly as I was earlier this summer… hoping that changes once I’m no longer in “hanging out with friends and family” summer social mode and am no longer in a financial crunch. One of those things has already wrapped up and the other thing is in the process of wrapping up, so… I’m looking forward to more cowboys soon!

hello again everyone! i am so sorry for how long it’s been since i’ve updated - a bunch of life stuff happened, which is why i’ve been gone for so long, and i’ll elaborate later in this post but suffice to say for now i’m back and i’m planning on posting biweekly devlogs to show progress on this! 

i am still really invested in telling this story, so no worries on that front! i hope to be able to have a demo out by the end of the year, but that’s not a hard deadline. it could be later, but it could also be much sooner! it all depends on how much time i get to work on it.

here’s where i am game-wise: over a year after i started working on it, i’m finally almost done with the outline of game mechanics and the story. all i have left to write is the finale, at this point, and then i can start actually scripting. i have the base character sprites done for 4/5 main characters, too, three of which you can see above, and have to do emotions for them and sprites for around ten other characters. 

here’s where i am, personally (tune out here if you’re not interested): i started college! it’s fun and it’s scary and it’s a lot of work, hence the long break between updates. i also spilled tea all over my laptop back in october and lost almost all of the art i’d done, which led to me getting really frustrated whenever i’d look at it for a while. i’m back now and, as you can see above, have been reworking all my sprites! i’ve got a new style and i’m honestly way happier with these than i was with the old ones anyway. 

thank you so much for sticking with me through all this! the haunting of brushfire lane has been my pet project for the past year and a half now and i can’t wait to get to share more of it with everyone. 

(the haunting of brushfire lane is a visual novel about gay love, found family, and existential optimism. if that sounds up your alley, consider checking out my blog @brushfirelanegame for more info! <3)

Sorry for the hiatus, went through a dark time. I’m making my own video game called The Saturday Train and I hope you all will join me on my game dev journey!

Smudge Purrfect / The Pumpkin King is the husband and co-ringmaster of Mrs. Purrfect. The two don’t get to see much of each other because of how many tasks they take care of for Grandmaster Needlework. It’s the cost of having such an important role in El Paradiso and to the Grandmaster. Smudge is the right-hand man of Raven as well as the court jester for the well-beloved King of Cats. Anything that’s important to his masters, is just as important to this cat. He takes pride in is work and his love for children. He loves the children more than the Grandmaster himself and takes care to make sure they have their best time of their lives in El Paradiso. He shares candy, jokes, and laughs with everyone under the sun, but cross him the wrong way, you may find out that lollipop isn’t just for show….