root vegetable boy

CHORUS MACHINE DEV LOG #12 - OCTOBER 2024

Happy November! Welcome to dev log #12!!! I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since I started development. Happy one year birthday to my little project... now CM can reasonably start taking steps... yahoo!

As you all might remember, I got top surgery on September 30th, so October has mostly been a recovery month for me. Post-op brain fog is very real and not to be underestimated... So, it’s another shorter log this time. But I’m only feeling better & better every day, so hopefully there will be more to discuss in November 24’s log ^_^ Onto the content!

small fixes:

I don’t think these count as “bug fixes” because there was no error message or anything... it’s not like the game was crashing... they were more like little quality of life adjustments.

whatever current song is playing will now fade out if you die. at some point in the last few months I finally got around to writing music for the first miniboss fight, and during testing a couple weeks back I realized the INTENSE MUSIC continuing after death kind of threw off the vibes. I’ll probably write a tiny little song/soundscape for the deathscreen at some point, but for now you get eerie silence ^_^ yayy
I noticed the weapon reload timer wasn’t properly centered over the player sprite and scooched it over a few pixels.
I changed the first miniboss’s collision mask from an ellipse to a rectangle.
I changed a bunch of the room names. formerly my naming convention for rooms was numbered: rm_floor1_1 followed by rm_floor1_2 followed by rm_floor1_3, etc. it did not take long for me to realize that this could get really confusing really fast, so I changed their names to be more reflective of their contents (rm_floor1_intro, rm_floor1_aeski, rm_floor1_hall, etc) and I now have a separate document to keep track of order & flow. this will make it a lot easier if I decide I want to put a new room in between two existing rooms, or if I want to reorder some of them.

dialogue changes:

I don’t think I’ve actually shown any dialogue in these dev logs? I’m a lot more secretive about my writing than I am about my art or code, but I rewrote several scenes... the previous dialogue was feeling kind of stilted & bogged down. I spent some time really reflecting on my characters’ different personalities and conflicts and rewrote most of their lines to give each character a more distinct voice & communication style. I think those scenes are reading a lot smoother and more naturally now! If you’re curious, my personal note for accomplishing this task just reads “changed [redacted] dialogue to make the girls meaner to each other”

new sprites:

Remember last month’s UI sketches? I’m slowly starting the process of spriting some of the save/load menu!

It’s extremely unfinished!! I have a lot a lot more to draw for this system, but I’m really happy with how it’s going so far. I'm also really happy I finally have One Proper Sprite to put in a log even if it’s far from complete.

That’s all I have for this log! If you’ve been sticking around for a whole year: THANK YOU!! I really can’t express how much I appreciate every person who has taken an interest in this project. I’ll see you in December for dev log 13 ^_^

Originally posted November 1st, 2024.