LAST UPDATED JANUARY 2025

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CHORUS MACHINE DEV LOG #13 - NOVEMBER 2024

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Hi everyone! Happy December! I realized a few days ago that while November 1st is the one year anniversary of development, December 1st is the one year anniversary of me posting these logs. It’s nice that there’s still something to celebrate ^_^

I’m sure you’ve already noticed, but all of my previous logs have been copied to my website! The original logs posted to my tumblr will stay up, but moving forward I’ll be posting any new ones here.

It’s been really interesting to read through each previous entry as I reposted them. I feel that the first six months of development contained less of ‘development’ time and more of ‘learning GameMaker’ time; there are plenty of things that I made in those first sixth months that still exist in the current version, but plenty more things that I either changed or cut completely. There were a lot of concepts or mechanics I talked about wanting to do that I decided against doing as my ideas got more specific.

At first, every log was a careful detailing of every single accomplishment, but in recent logs I find myself deliberately choosing to omit certain tasks that I’ve worked on. The reasons for this vary. Sometimes it's due to the juicy spoilery reason you’d imagine, but a lot of times it’s just because it was boring or hard to explain. So this is a reminder of sorts, both to you and to myself, that these logs are still a curation of a rather messy and extremely lengthy process, however honest and straightforward I try to be in them.

Anyway, with the self-reflection out of the way, let’s look at the work I’ve done this past November.

In the September log I posted some UI sketches, and at the end of October started transferring my ideas into actual sprite work. The sprite above is an extremely unfinished version of what will be the save/load menu, sans my watermark.

It took me a number of iterations to settle on a style & palette that fit, and drawing in so few colors was its own delightful challenge. I'm being very intentional and thoughtful with this aspect of my game, because of it being a core mechanic, but unfortunately being intentional and thoughtful makes the process much longer. Long-time followers of these logs may recall I started working on save/load mechanics eleven months ago, and it's still far from complete...

So, halfway through the month, I decided to make a list of everything that needed to be done for a proper, released, free DEMO. I now have this list. I love this list. This list is very long. I made a joke to my partner that my personal recipe for productivity is this list + forcing myself to use placeholder art + chanting “I am not making sprites right now” under my breath the entire time I work. I also changed how I take notes as I work; previously, I would list everything that I had done in a working session, and then use that list to inform the dev log. But this past month I ended up just color-coding sections of the long demo list, marking things as either in-progress or complete.

This is where that curation disclaimer I wrote at the beginning of this log comes into play. The good news (& it’s wonderful, fantastic news) is that with this method I’ve gotten a good chunk of actual play complete! Probably the first 10 minutes of the game or so, you can play straight through, though much of the art & sound is still unfinished.

But, as you may have noticed, I feel kind of shy sharing actual game events in these logs; I haven’t shown any dialogue, and I’ve only briefly introduced the main characters. It’s easy to show off art; sometimes I kind of rely on any spritework I’ve done to carry that month’s log. And now that I’m in a spot where I’m actively trying not to make art, I’m making faster progress, but I have less to show for it.

With that in mind, the format/length/tone of these logs will probably vary a lot in the coming months. Thanks for being patient, and thanks for your curiosity.

I’ll see you all in 2025!!


Originally posted November 30th, 2024.