Hey all!
Glad I didn’t make the same mistake I did with VLT in announcing a date before I get it set in stone, because it happened again. I didn’t realize how much I had left to do, actually! I’m only just now 100% finishing up with Act 1 (CGs, sprites, and other things I’ve missed along the way) and cleaning up the main meat of Act 2’s Human encounter. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been working on behind the scenes that can’t really be explained in a simple devlog, so we’re going to stick to the stuff that can be shown off on a social media post.
Added something new and interesting to Act 2 - back sprites! I’ve always loved visual novels that gave you more than just a flat head-on direction for character sprites, so that’s something I wanted to do for ACoMI as well. I’ll probably add them in to Act 3 once I get the demo up and running, but for now this should make the cinematography feel cleaner and more dynamic.
I’m still mucking around a bit with the positioning of back-sprites, how to get the transition from front-facing to back-facing cleaner, and things like that, but I’m really pleased with how the sprite itself came out! My hope is to make the point-of-focus clearer in certain scenes, as that’s a pretty big thing that I’ve always had gripes about with a lot of visual novels I’ve read before.
Started working on the art for the majority of Act 2, now that Act 1 is pretty much done except for spriting one last branch! A lot of it is objects that’ll get positioned around the area Perdita is in (something that a player is introduced to in Act 1), but I’ve gotten a few CGs at least sketched out as well. To be honest, a lot of this month was primarily work behind-the-scenes with scripting and spriting, but I’m trying to get more art done to make up for that.
Finally biting the bullet on drawing Draconic Mania’s sprite! It’s a little embarrassing to say, considering how major of a character he is, but I’ve been putting it off for a while now - only using his sketch during my programming so I can get coordinates right. It does feel good to finally cross that off my list, though!
Balancing out how much work I want to do on the “boring” stuff (programming and writing) vs the “flashy” parts of the game (art) at a time is something that I’ve never been able to figure out, even after being a visual novel developer for… 5 years now, I think. Plus, getting all the artwork done month-per-month does make for some pretty good development logs, but it’ll make for some very boring posts afterwards. Hoping I’ll have something more exciting in May!
For now, here’s a piece I’m really proud of:
Thanks a bunch for reading through this post! If you want something to chew on while waiting for ACoMI, why not try my other game, Veins Like Tapeworms? It goes on sale pretty regularly and has a 2-chapter demo totally for free!
See you soon!
Trinket