#nobody make fun of my bad grammar and incorrect use of tenses. I am very caffeinated.

[dragonspike-vn]

Devlog: 9th May, '24

Aka, the first devlog! Yippee! Excitement!

Dragonspike is an idea that I've been rotating in my head for a long time. Originally, it began as a traditional novel that I slid towards writeblr for but felt that it was somewhat limited in the scope of what I wanted to do. I put it on the shelf for a bit before deciding to look at it again and found that I was just as enamoured with the idea as I was at its conception. However, instead of a novel, I instead decided to make it a visual novel.

I had a very clear idea of the world and the tropes I wanted to pull from and, using those, I started planning it in Obsidian and made an outline of the initial plot but didn't even touch Ren'Py for the first bit of time. As of yesterday, I had a few thousand words of planning in place and then I finally touched the coding side...

I knew before I got into anything that I wanted to set up the character customisation first because it would a) give me an idea of how to work with imagemaps and b) be the first step to figuring out how to use sideimages for when the player talks. I decided to go for a fullbody rather than a cropped version which I may actually change in the future.

Right now, I have a very rudimentary character creation screen with some pretty basic art for it.

I based it off of lunalucid's template on itch.io and woof, I struggled so much. At one point, I stared between my version and the template and couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong. The answer was that I missed about eight commas. This is why you don't code at 3am, kids. But theoretically it all works! Theoretically. I've had a few friends give it a test and they haven't said anything about it breaking so I think that bodes well.

With this done, I think I can comfortably start figuring out how I want the UI to be laid out. I'll possibly also work on writing a little bit more of the prologue if I still have energy once my Monster wears off and after running MotW. I think I'll probably crash pretty hard and end up fighting the urge to crack another can open.