Reminiscent64

I'm working on a demo for A King's Genocide while I'm between jobs.

It's a Dark Fantasy story about an angel named Aracelia and a series of murders happening around her in the Angel City of Eridu.

It's going to be a kinetic/visual novel. But I plan on expanding it in the sequel.

#gamedev #vndev

Something about playing as a dragoon in Final Fantasy VI is so satisfying.

Just seeing Mog hit the ground in combination with the damage done being displayed feels right. Even better when you get 2 or 3 more jumps.

That’s good game design!

#gamedev #indiedev

Final Fantasy VI is absolutely the culmination of all Final Fantasy games before it.

I can see why it’s considered the greatest of the Final Fantasy games.

VI has my number 2 spot for its gameplay alone so far. Final Fantasy X is still my all-time favorite though.

#gamedev #vndev

Obligatory reminder that you’re awesome and you’re going to make an awesome game!

#gamedev #vndev

Currently creating a demo for A King’s Genocide using what I have. Then I’m opening a Patreon.

Either it succeeds and I get enough funding to finish my game, or I have to keep job searching and waiting for someone to hire me.

Game gets done either way. Win-win.

#gamedev #vndev

Dispatch is good!

It has just the right ratio of gameplay to scenes when played as a whole.

On one hand, weekly releases probably didn’t help it. The gameplay felt sparse without all the episodes.

But at the same time, the story was so engaging that I was left engaged each week!

#gamedev #vndev

Indie development is the future. That’s why if you have an idea for a video game, you should do what you can to bring the game to life.

Don’t wait on a publisher to pick you up. Set aside some of your income and make that game.

The world waits for your magnum opus!

#gamedev #vndev

Never give up.

Rework the idea if needed, but don’t give up.

#gamedev #vndev

I hope everyone forgets about the troubles in life, if only for today, and enjoy spooky day in their own way…

Even if it’s just watching Charlie Brown!

#gamedev #indiedev

One of the many many dangers of Python for inexperienced programmers is that when you search online for something, often the solutions people provide are way overengineered or just straight up insane.

You'll end up with 70 haphazardly installed packages and at least one will break every update.

Every now and then, I get a person reaching out to ask to help with my game.

That’s just one more reason I know what I’m trying to make is interesting.

So remember, if someone reaches out to you asking to help, you’re clearly doing something right!

#gamedev #indiedev

I hope all you software engineers on the job hunt find a job soon so you can get back to making your video games!

But it would be a mistake not to prepare for a long search. Save money where you can. I’m on month ~8 of my search and I have no bites.

Your life comes first.

#gamedev #vndev

It’s never too late to make your video game.

Get up, figure out the role you’ll play in developing your video game, and bring it to life!

#gamedev #vndev

I don't know who needs to hear this right now, but to any indie devs feeling bad because their game didn't sell or wasn't played as much as you wanted:

You still made a god damn video game. You did it, and that's harder than anything most people will do. I'm proud of you, you did great.

I’m working on my game A King’s Genocide.

It will never in a million years have A.I., and if anyone ever finds that it does, absolutely tar and feather me.

Don’t ever use generative A.I. in your video game.

It calls into question your ethics and morals, and that’s the last thing you need holding back your game.

Besides, there are too many people out there who’d be making awesome things for you if you’d just give them a chance!

#gamedev #vndev

I finished Shin Megami Tensei V, and I gotta say… it’s definitely better than the original.

The sluggishness is gone at least on Steam. The difficulty absolutely got toned down in places, but it’s still there for super bosses. Specifically True Masakado.

Definitely an improvement.

#gamedev #vndev

You don't need a publisher. A publisher will only want you if your game is going to succeed anyway.

And even then, they'll take way more than they provide.

From there, I had a blinking animation occurring at random and mouth movement on speaking lines!

Code showing the SetTalkStateVariable function. It simply sets the Talking state machine variable to whatever boolean value we've handed the function.

The OnStartedSpeaking and OnFinishedSpeaking events. We've attached the SetTalkStateVariable function to these events with OnStartedSpeaking setting the Talking state machine variable to true and the OnFinishedSpeaking event setting the Talking state machine variable to false.

For code, all we need for the mouth animation is a function to set the Talking state machine variable to True or False as needed.

From there, I just hooked the function up to the Speaking events Naninovel has.

OnStartedSpeaking sets Talking to True.
OnFinishedSpeaking sets Talking to False.

The Talking animation. It shows Mouth game object's SpriteRenderer switching the mouth sprite to the closed sprite, than to the opened sprite, then back to the closed sprite.

The animations for the Silent and Talking states are about as simple as it was for the eyes.

Maybe even simpler since the Talking state ends on the silent mouth sprite. As a result, the Silent state actually has no associated animation.

The state machine for the mouth. There's a Silent state and a Talking state with two transitions; one going from Silent to Talking and vice-versa.

The transition from Silent to Talking. Under conditions, it says that Talking must be true.

A transition from Talking to Silent. Under conditions, it says that Talking must be false.

The mouth had a bit more coding involved, but its state machine essentially looks the same.

For the transition from Silent to Talking, we set a condition for the Talking state machine variable to be True.

From Talking to Silent, we set a condition for the Talking state variable to be False.

A picture of code. The GenerateBlinkValue function is called in the Update function. The GenerateBlinkValue function increments the _Time variable by Time.deltaTime. When the _Time variable has reached the value of the blinkInterval variable, we set the BlinkInterval state machine variable to a random integer between 0 and 100. Then we reset the _Time variable to 0.

The transition from the Looking state to the Blinking state. Under conditions, it says that BlinkValue must be greater than 50.

The transition from Blinking to Looking. Under conditions, it says that BlinkValue must be less than 50.

After that, I put a script at the top of my prefab of Aracelia with a custom Behavior class to manipulate the state machine and its variables as needed.

For the eyes, every call of the update function, we generate a random value and set it to the BlinkValue state machine variable.

For the transition from Looking to Blinking, I set a condition where the transition happens if my BlinkValue state machine variable is greater than 50.

For the transition from Blinking to Looking, I set a condition where the transition happens if my BlinkValue state variable is less than 50.

A state machine in Unity showing a Looking and Blinking states. There is a transition from the Looking state to the Blinking state and vice-versa.

The Looking Animation that adjusts the Sprite Hash on the Eyes game object set the Sprite Render to the looking sprite.

The blinking animation that first sets the eye game object's sprite renderer to the "eyes closed" sprite before settting it back to the "eyes open" sprite.

The eye animation was actually the easiest to set up.

You create a default Looking state that always sets Aracelia's eyes to open. From there, create a Blinking state that plays the blinking animation.

Then you create a transition to and from the Blinking and Looking states.

So, how did I get Aracelia to blink and move her mouth during her dialogue?

State machines, animations, and a little bit of C# in Unity!
Read on to learn more!

#gamedev #vndev

For those who need the refresher, this is Aracelia. She's the main character of A King's Genocide!

This is how she'll look in-game. Her eyes and even other character's eyes will blink at random intervals and her mouth moves when she speaks.

I'll explain how I did it later!

#gamedev #indiedev

After it’s become pretty clear I’m not finding another job anytime soon, I’ve been working on adding Aracelia’s sprite to my game.

I need to get the blinking and talking animation working in Unity, but I might have something to show soon.

Progress!

#gamedev #indiedev