- I Survived Exams Oh My God. My Christmas break was fun too, I went to Thailand! Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to work on the game, but I drew/wrote some very nice things. One came to me while I was meditating. That’s not really what meditation is for, but hey… I should do it more often if it results in this kind of thing. Back in Semester 2 now, but game work is happening.
- I’ve been taking some interviews to better understand my characters. They provided me with more insight into how I should write the world of shroom soup than anything else so far. Here’s a photo from my interview with Mx. Shiitake:
…Actually, we’re just cooking up some sound effects. Courtesy of Tommuel :3
- Came up with something between an Easter egg hunt and a puzzle type. It’s really funny (at least for me /nervous laughter/) and involves water and a bacteria-yeast colony. And sugar. Lots of sugar. To be programmed.
- That bubble thing. Programmed what it does c: Timer operations learned!
- There will be a “rest spot” system to chill in a safe place and chat with party members.
- More inspiration -> more character backstories, even more edgy stuff… (But not too much. shroom soup is medium spicy.)
- Still need to finish off the first arc, but for now I’ve started working on a parallax map for the next area. I don’t have much experience with parallax, but I hope it works…
- Endings. Several things:
Revised the ending system. It used to be way too complicated, based on battles, points, dialogue choices… I don’t even know how I was going to program that.
Anyways, now there’s 3 main routes: Bad, Normal(?) (yes, with a question mark), Good. The routes can overlap depending on how you play (either Good or Bad can be made into Normal, Normal can be made Bad), so one wouldn’t have to replay the whole thing.
In total there’s 5 main endings, plus some extra “fake” ones (what you would call a “bad end”. I always wanted to make this an annoying game where you die in hilarious ways a lot.) The route is determined by battle outcomes, and the final ending is determined by a choice near the end. Easy.
(Now that I’ve looked at the ending guide again, it still needs more work to fully make sense… aaaaaahhhh nooooes. I’ll make a flowchart eventually. I love the idea of interactive, non-linear fiction, but it sure takes brains to figure out.)
Aaaand I got an idea for a brand new ending now. Not sure what should lead to it, though.
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I also wrote out dialogue for a couple of the endings! Breaking my own heart and getting triple-attached to my characters in the process. I hope it breaks the player too~
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- And finally, I drew this Arnika. A bit messy, but that’s one possible style for cutscenes. (She’s uncharacteristically cute here.)
I also realised that leaving talksprites for the very end of development equals unnecessary suffering putting them all in later, so I’ll start working on them soon. What do you think of this style, people and aliens?
Hello to all the new followers! :> I wanted to write a little about shroom soup design history, so here it is. Part 1/3.
In terms of character design, Arnika may have changed the most. Her first appearances in my drawings are dated something like 2012, and back then she looked like this:
I called her “Corpsepaint-chan”. She was prone to growing third eyes and horns (as well as getting freckles and turning into a balloon, apparently), and had a little mint kitty on her shirt. Her colour was magenta rather than pastel pink. (Magenta/mint/white vs pink/olive/black. I just happened to doodle with a magenta pen in class.)
I personally think she was a lot more moe/creepy-cute than Arnika, but maybe that’s debatable.
Then BAM! And these guys happened:
Arnika had a white shirt with a lemon on it, and Arthur hasn’t changed all that much (except the first concepts had horns, slightly different-coloured clothes, and no Nagito Komaeda hair). There were some later changes, like Arni’s clothes and the fact that her hair is dyed.
There’s a certain important character who appears later in the game. I changed her name twice. My friends are still confused as a result… And recently she got some extra titles and pseudonyms…
Other characters got redesigns and name changes too, but no one shall know (yet) due to my spoilerphobia. ;^)
grimmshollow asked:
sorry if it's been asked before, but how did you do some of the art for toxic shroom swamp - like the banner on your itch io page, or your title screen? it's really unique and i've never seen anything like it before in the gamedev community!
Hey! I actually haven’t been asked this before, thanks for the ask ^^ I drew them both traditionally and edited a bit after that. I like traditional art more than digital, I think.
This is the original title screen art. It’s super old, from around the time I came up with the initial idea. In fact, it wasn’t even supposed to be for a game, but my mushroom obsession was strong and so I wanted to make a ceramic head sculpture with mushrooms growing on it. This was the concept art for that.
Later I took this art and messed with it in Paint.NET (curves, resize, add noise) to make a “temporary” title screen, but ended up liking it enough to keep it. I am really fond of it, can’t think of a better title screen, oddly enough.
Fun fact: the very first rendition looked like this! :D
Then I made some different colour versions and eventually arrived at this.
As for the header art, I drew it in my sketchbook with Inktense pencils, then glued on cuttings from a religious leaflet someone had handed to me on the street. I get very excited whenever that happens, Christian leaflets are the best inspiration/collage source. (The text was just like that, by the way. Well, except for the Mycelium part.)
Then made some colour edits in SAI and voila:
So this is how :3 Glad you like it, thanks again! uvu
I keep forgetting to post my art online, so… here! A drawing of my VTuber/sona, “Kai Mycelium”! Very happy with how it turned out, my digital art skills are surely levelling up.
Here’s an older reference using the Live2D model I made:
I’ve been having so much fun streaming as this unhinged menhera mushroom. And I’m still floored when people drop by my streams and support me. 💜
I do a lot of art and gamedev streams (yes, I found shroom soup content to show that isn’t spoilers! Yes, it’s very much still in development and things are going great!)
We’ve hit Twitch Affiliate and 100+ followers, so I decided to finally do a karaoke stream sometime soon… >.< nervcited! Will likely be at the end of the month because I’m going away to volunteer, but yeah! Watch this space~
The space in question, where the fungal alien resides:
I’ll be doing these from time to time (maybe even once a week?) until I run out of non-spoiler content to make. It’s mostly non-boss enemies and some assets here and there.
I also sometimes do coworking streams with Spirit City (cute focus tool game) where I do the spoilery stuff off screen! Also general unrelated drawing and gaming streams.
We’re definitely getting there with the game 💪 Progress update upcoming.
Last winter I wrote a post about motivation on my Russian dev blog. I decided to translate it now, since I think it was pretty good. Also, it’s about time I make some devhelp content for this blog, rather than just reblogging from other people.
I have a lot of trouble with procrastination and unmotivation when it comes to gam mak, as someone with ADHD and a busy university schedule as well. These are things I personally do to try and fight it.
✍️ Advice from a superhuman gamedev friend: try to identify the problem and act accordingly. Don’t know what to do with Location X? Brainstorm it, sketch out some ideas, make concept art. No time/energy/motivation to make graphics right now? You can go write out dialogues or event something. Don’t like Location Y, or maybe it seems redundant? Go ahead and delete it without mercy. :D
✍️ Make a list of everything you need to do. The more detailed, the better - at least for me. Subheadings help. You won’t jump on top of a mountain in one push, but little steps will slowly bring you to the top c: Here’s a piece of my demo checklist. Crossing things out has never felt so good.
✍️ Another thing that is useful to do is to write out your progress. It may be hard to estimate, but useful to track how you’re doing! I can’t seem to do an overall estimate for my game, so I just wrote it out by level like this. (Also 2/5 is 40%, I know. I’m bad at maths, okay?)
✍️ Get inspired! Play some other games; watch, read or listen to something new. Some people prefer to take everything from their own head (which isn’t even quite true), but I am more inclined to absorbing as much information as possible. I live off inspiration from all kinds of things.
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Share your work! Getting feedback from players is incredibly motivating. All those likes, comments, impressions, fanart even… It makes me really happy and makes me want to keep going, because it’s not just for me anymore, someone actually enjoys it! (So for fans: don’t be afraid to give feedback to authors, feed us~)
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Oversharing isn’t good, however. It’s a psychological thing - if you talk about your plans too much, your brain may feel like they have already been fulfilled and you don’t need to do much else. So I am careful about what I share. That’s why I don’t post too much about my game’s plot besides the demo.
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Take a break! Seriously, just put it aside for a day. Don’t think about your project, do anything you want. It might clear your mind and bring the inspiration back.
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Watch a cute anime about Overcoming Hardships and Achieving Goals, or just listentosomemusic from it… Yes, this is the final point of my post because it really does help me. My favourites for this are Love Live! and Little Witch Academia. You might have something else that motivates you. (Please do share, or give recs for similar cute things as well :>)
And this concludes my advice. Feel free to add to this post if there’s anything that helps you!
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