This past week, I’ve continued working on the investigation of Ryuunosuke‘s room, slowly shaping things up into what I want them to be like in the final game. For the most part, that means ironing out the dialogues and investigation comments, as well as deciding what kind of stuff to keep, what to kick out and what to restructure.
You can examine quite a bit in Ryuu‘s room. Maybe even a little too much. When I realized there were over 30 things to click on, I kinda figured… maybe that’s a bit overkill, haha. So instead, I cut down on the number of examinable objects and tried to make the remaining ones really worth your while, by providing clues, foreshadowing, characterization or trivia, rather than just funny commentary (although funny moments still remain aplenty, at least if you share my kind of humor).
What I struggled with the most were the really important discussion topics. Keiichi can ask Amber a number of things, ranging from more information about the T-Rex to Ryuunosuke‘s medical condition. These are very complex topics that were difficult to structure and decide on how much detail to go into. What needs to be said here? What is ultimately irrelevant? What can I still provide later?
I’ve definitely put a lot of thought into this, though, in the end, it’s impossible for me to tell whether the result is actually good or still in need of adjustments. But I guess that’s something playtesters will hopefully be able to help me with soon. For now, all I can do is to write things in a way where I enjoy reading them.
Anyway, asset work has continued on the side as well, so I’ve made a few more adjustments to the background and took care of a number of minor visual assets, such as various cut-in windows that appear throughout conversations, in order to highlight the object/person the characters are talking about. For instance, when Keiichi brings up a note that’s stuck to Ryuu‘s pinboard, the following cut-in shows up:
I’m generally trying to find some ways again to have the longer dialogue segments provide a bit more visual variety, rather than just have the sprites of the two characters shown all the time, and I personally think I had some neat ideas which were fun to work on!
Jurassic June is right around the corner now, and I’d really like patrons to be able to go dino hunting in Ryuu‘s room sometime during that month (and maybe provide a little preview video on YouTube for everyone else). So that’s kind of a goal I’m currently working towards. Still will require quite a bit of work, though.
Anyway, that mostly sums up this week, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
