Glass Bubble Week 9

This is development week nine out of eighteen for Glass Bubble. The previous week's devlog can be found here.

I came to the realization that I really, really don't want to create graphical assets for Glass Bubble. I felt that I would take too long, that I would be upset with the quality of art I would produce, and every time I thought about creating assets I got very discouraged.

These all sound like excuses (because they probably are) and I even thought about perhaps not working on Glass Bubble anymore and to try doing something else.

Instead, I decided to find someone else to do the art for me. I contacted one of my friends, Marlena (as of this writing, her website is a work in progress), that I had met over the summer and asked if she would be willing to do the art for the game. After I pitched it to her, she accepted and I tried to do everything I could to make sure she was up to speed.

I sent Marlena an outline of the game's story, scripts of all of the characters, and some of the music among other things. It's going to be a little difficult to work with her, as we don't live in the same place, but hopefully we will be able to communicate to each other well enough to make a great game. I also wanted to make it clear that it was her game now too and that if she wanted to change or suggest things that was fine with me. I didn't want to have someone that was just the artist that I sent requests to like I was just asking for commissions or something.

Soon we're going to go over character sketches to make sure we're on the same page and after that she will start making assets for the game.

On the other hand, I realize that week nine marks the halfway point for this game's development schedule. Do I feel like I'm halfway through the game? I'm not sure. I feel like if I don't have assets for the game, I won't be able to show the game. I could, if I made the game look like Thomas Was Alone, but I don't want to do that.

I'm also not sure about my friend's schedule and whether she can produce enough assets before the end of the game's development schedule. This is something I will have to work out with her. It is possible that I will have to extend the time alloted for this game in order to accomodate making assets.

Now that I don't need to make assets, I plan on spending the time refactoring the dialog code and seeing how viable doing voiceovers for the game will be, which is a feature I had previously cut before making the game. I'm not planning on going back and adding minor characters because I don't want to add to the asset creation load that my friend will have to do. Voiceovers, on the other hand, can be easily recorded and added to the game by me. The only problem is finding voice actors and developing the language I want to have spoken in the game.