Glass Bubble Week 12

This is development week twelve out of eighteen for Glass Bubble. The previous week's devlog was not written, but you can find the devlog for week ten here.

It's been a while now since I've deviated from the original plan that I set out when I started this project. Supposedly, right now I should be making the graphical assets for Daedor, but I have since offloaded all of the graphical work to my friend, Marlena. I also stated last time in week ten's devlog that I would spend time putting together a base level. I did that, but not really.

So, this devlog will be about different things than I would have anticipated myself writing about: Graphic asset progress, my Ren'Py/Unity3D library, and voice-overs.

Graphic Asset Progress

Marlena has been making terrific progress on the graphical assets for the game. Here is some of the concept art she has done:

As you can tell, they are all very rough sketches. I also got to see some rough animation work, which is pretty exciting. Probably the best thing about working with Marlena is the ability to work out ideas with her. She has a lot of ideas about the characters, setting, and etc. that I have not considered or thought of.

I also had trouble putting together a base level partly because I didn't have enough time but also because I forgot to make placeholder assets. Even when I did create some placeholder assets, I found that I have no idea how I or Marlena wanted to scale everything relative to each other. So, yesterday or so, we had a nice discussion about that and I got a sample character asset from her so we could scale things appropriately. Making a base level will probably be something that happens slowly over time as assets get made.

Ren'Py/Unity3D Library

For Port of Call and this game, I've been developing a library called Racontuer to handle narrative assets. What it does, essentially, is allow me to directly use scripts that I've created in Ren'Py in Unity3D. I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished so far with the tool and I hope to spend more time working on it as it is far from fully featured (in fact, it needs a lot of work; there is very scant support for most Ren'Py syntax features). I spent some time this past week tidying it up and I decided to open source it on Github.

Voice-Overs

Unfortunately I've been having a harder time getting work done on this game due to schoolwork. This week I'll be attending the annual EGaDS Game Jam as usual (which takes place at 7:00 PM on Friday for 24 hours) and I'm thinking about working on Glass Bubble while I'm at the Game Jam. This means I won't be able to partake in the usual festivities, but it would allow me to do a lot of catching up as I've already been planning to go to begin with.

This weekend I'm hoping to get the rest of the dialog finalized, translated, and then have at least part of it voiced over. Part of this means I have to iron out some kinks in the dialog that feel a little odd and awkward. Additionally, I have to find someone with a decent microphone to record speech with. I also need to find voice actors for the game, and I've been thinking about putting out a casting call at the RTF college or contacting the voice actors we used at Underdog Games for Port of Call.

I've also been toying around with the idea of making a song in Baskiv as I have a friend who used to do choir in high school. I'm thinking about making a short 30 second track which would play when you finish the demo with some nice swelling orchestral backing (since I recently acquired the East West Philharmonic Orchestra VST), but I'm having trouble thinking of what lyrics I would want to use.