Devlog: 14 June 2024

Now that I have made the demo a little bit shorter, I believe it will be released this year. There’s still a lot of pixel art to do and backgrounds to finish, but it is what it is. I wish my backgrounds were more stylized. Many things are not in scale, and everything looks very "straight," not stylized enough, unlike the backgrounds from FF7 or Moon RPG, which are my main sources of references and inspiration. Apfel Project does have a style, but not the one I envisioned from the beginning. Who knows, maybe I'll make another, much smaller game once I finish Apfel Project, learning from all my mistakes. I've always wanted to make a game with a day/night cycle :thinking:

You might have also seen some of the 45-second animation snippets I've been posting, featuring music, backgrounds, and 3D models of some of the characters. I'm spending way too much time working on these models only for them to be used in really short animations that appear in-game, but hey, I like how they are turning out. Also, I usually post extra ones on my Instagram, which I started using again after a long time.

Also, the demo will be translated into Japanese, Spanish, and hopefully German. The folks over at Moonatic offered to translate it into Japanese in exchange for my help with some miscellaneous tasks. I just hope it doesn't take too much of my time away from working on Apfel Project.

A lot of people usually ask me to help with the game, but I refuse any help because I want to finish the demo by myself. I was actually thinking about getting some help for ACTs 2 and 3, but seeing how things are going, I might have to look for help after I release the demo, especially for the prerendered backgrounds, which take an incredible amount of time to complete. So yeah, if you're interested in helping, just let me know. I'll announce it more formally later for other positions too. Not music though, music is 100% made by me. Mwuahahahahaha.

Devlog: 5 May 2024

My vision for the textbox portraits was for them to resemble sketchbook doodles, but after trying to draw three portraits I realized that keeping the same style across hundreds of different sprites is literally impossible so I made a 3D/2D rig for Apfel (and many other characters) and I kinda like the final result, they look like the other vision I had for the portraits, which was for them to resemble illustrations from a children's book. Now I just gotta make a 3D model for the scenes, a 2D model for the portraits and a pixelart version for each relevant character! (I'm being sarcastic this is fucking hell.)

I also started polishing some backgrounds, I even designed fake advertisings that appear on some billboards, which is funny because they are literally indistinguishable in the final low-res render. (Cris, if you're reading this, I took your dog to make one.)

To be honest the development is progressing quite well, I'd do better with some help but I don't really feel like asking for help just for the demo. Now that I don't have to worry about a battle system everything is flowing smoother, I implemented a ton of cool features to the game, made a couple songs, wrote some dialogues and I'm designing the GUI which personally, I think looks amazing.

When will the demo release? Hopefully this year but I gotta lock in (Or get some slaves to make pixelart and backgrounds for me, which is the thing I spend the most time working on, especially the outdoor backgrounds.) I also have to set up an event I want to make for the demo release and plan a Kickstarter, tons of work, I wish I could be working 24/7 on the game.

I probably sound like a broken record: "blah blah blah, backgrounds hard, game will release this year blah blah blah, i removed battle system blah blah blah" To be honest, if you want to know something about the game just ask me and I'll probably answer as long as I'm not spoiling anything.

Man making long games is hard I'm not doing this again, anyways this was a sad looking devlog, I hope that the next one will be better.

26 Apr 2024

My indecisive ass can't decide if I should make a battle system or not, I already added and removed a battle system at least SIX times since I started making this game. It's not that is hard to do (it kinda is) it's just that... it doesn't feel right, you actually shouldn't be fighting anyone. I can't shake the feeling that I need to add some kind of action element to the game because otherwise people might think it's boring.

The main aspects of the game are the aesthetics the prerendered backgrounds carry, the music, and the story itself (hopefully, because getting feedback for something I don't want to spoil is hard), I often think of Apfel Project as a "Visual novel-Walking simulator", and not in a bad way. "Adding a battle system will feel crammed in!", I think everytime I choose to remove the battle system, yet some months pass by and I decide to implement a battle system again?!

Yes, this game is by definition an RPG, a Role-Playing-Game, you play the role of Apfel, and sometimes Blume and sometimes blahblahblah... traditional RPG mechanics are... guess what... battles! But I really just want the player to move around and unravel the narrative of the game. Maybe I'm just overthinking, could a "walking simulator" actually be fun to play? Let's be honest, the graphics are really not that impressive, even if my skills have improved this past year, I still think they are kind of mediocre.

Anyway, if I hold on to this decision for a couple more weeks I'll release the battle theme song I made which I think is fucking amazing, to be honest.

TLDR: "Oh no, the battle system doesn't feel natural, I'm going to remove it... but... wait... now there's no action! Oh no! I'm pretty sure that people don't want to play a walking simulator, they will think my game is boring!"

To be honest, I should just learn how to ignore others' opinions and make a game that I myself would play.

24 Apr 2024

Still thinking about what kind of battle system would fit into Apfel Project, I feel like turn based combat has been done to death and it's boring, after all, my main objective is to make the Apfel Project a game that I would enjoy playing myself.

It also has to be, like, "customizable", I don't know how to explain it but to put it in a way, you don't find as many mods for custom Dragon Quest battles as, for example, Undertale. Undertale did this amazingly, it has a simple, yet broad battle system with a lot of potential for customization.

I also want to implement alchemy into the battle system, obviously. I have to get out my head that alchemy is only; earth, fire, water and air, alchemy has a lot of interesting things that can be used for a battle system yet I can't think of none.

24 Mar 2024

Making some progress with the prerendered backgrounds, I have done like 20 out of 45 I have on my to-do list (There will probably be way more than 45 but hey, not bad.)

Thinking about that, not only I have to make backgrounds, but animations too... That's going to be a lot of work; Battle animations (Which I don't know how will I make them work since they are prerendered, and putting in there a battle background is going to be hell.) Scene animations, pixelart animations... all this without taking into account all the other things like coding, making the music, the sprites, translation... I'll get this done, sooner or later, it's too late already to give up on this project after the immense amount of hours I spent on it.

07 Mar 2024

I decided to get all the Apfel Project backgrounds and rescale them down by 50% so they actually match the pixelart size, and to be honest, I like how they look now, plus, the file size got decreased by 75%.

Then I remembered that I wanted the overworld sprites to be 3D prerendered sprites and they will probally not look as good at 50% of their original scale. Such a shame, since making 3D animations is waaaaay easier than pixelart animations. Who knows, maybe I'll revamp the graphics for ACT 2 & 3, for now, they'll stay pixelart.

04 Mar 2024

I spent all of yesterday making this low-poly Apfel model, which only has 662 triangles! I will probably use it for the prerendered battle sprites, though at first, I was planning on using it for the overworld sprite. I've been thinking about switching to a 3D prerendered model instead of the pixel art look. I'm still considering it.

29 Feb 2024

I'm planning on revamping how the battles will look so they are actually 3D within GameMaker capabilities. For the demo I will code it all by myself, but after the crowdfunding ends I will look for coding help. So if by any chance you're an experienced 3D GameMaker developer capable of porting the battle system, hit me up.

28 Feb 2024

I've created a new section to track the progress of Apfel Project. Honestly, seeing all those numbers is kind of depressing. I would have thought I'd have more tasks completed by now.

Also, in May I'm attending Animayo, it's an event where a lot of animators gather. It's an opportunity for me to distribute my portfolio to professionals who may consider hiring me. So, yea, I'm working on my portfolio to have something more professional to give them. This might slow development... Unless the animations I create are directly Apfel Project related.

27 Feb 2024

I'm making an HTML5 mockup for the battle system so people can try it easily and get some feedback. Coding this is honestly hard as fuck LOL.