So I was working on doing the scenes to visit the temples and shrines today for Kawaii, but then I wasn’t really sure what to write. Like your group just goes around and explores them a bit but nothing super exciting is going on there. Well originally when I was doing the part of the game where you plan out your daily activities, I was just throwing out random stuff I thought would make sense in a game about visiting Japan. Though I wasn’t entirely thinking about what places would be best for the story. Which is how I got visiting the temples and shrines, which is a common thing people do when visiting Japan. Though it isn’t necessarily a girly or cute environment, nor are temples a place that you are going to actively do stuff in.

So in the options you pick to visit, there is the spooky haunted shrine. Now in that shrine, it has the haunted element to it, which adds more to the scenes and gives more context for things the player can do and how to interact with others. Just saying the characters are visiting a temple though doesn’t really give that though.

Anyway, I feel like I didn’t really plan this out as well as I could have, so it left me a little stumped on how to write out the scenes of exploring the temples and shrines around the town.

So this week I am working on Kawaii and I think I will do days 9 and 10. They will probably be shorter days. Getting closer to the end of the game, with the last two days being really long and packed full of stuff to do. Some of these shorter days might be a good place to put in some side stuff though, for relationships and stuff.

Tuesday: Do day 9 temples and shrines.
Wednesday: Do day 9 areas you to get pick to visit.
Thrusday: Day 10 festival.
Friday: Get some relationship stuff and finish everything up and release the next update.

I have not decided what I will do next week yet. Maybe another update for kawaii. I will post a full schedule for the month next week though.

So didn’t really play any games today on the day off, instead I was watching anime. I checked out a bunch of the new anime that was coming out this season. My favorites so far is Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song, since I life scifi and robot stuff and it is a pretty interesting story, and also Shadow House, which has a very interesting and unique story as well. Actually I read some of the manga for shadow house too, since there was only like 2 episodes outs for it and the manga is pretty good too.

I was working a bit on the game I spoke about a while back, with the bunch of random transformations and stuff in it. I think there is probably enough stuff there to release it soon. So maybe next weekend I will release it as a bonus game. I am not going to put it on the schedule though, since it is just a small side project.

On a side note, I noticed I messed up the schedule again. For the second time I left an entire week off. My plan is to do stuff every week, so if I accidently skip a week you can just assume it is probably a typo in the future. So next week I will be working on kawaii again.

I got the new update for Magic Girl Contest! It was kind of a mess yesterday but I think I sorted it out and it might have worked out okay. I wasn’t sure where I would take the game next but sort of made an outline for where to go. So we got several battle scenes to frame things. I added several place holder scenes as well, for where I want to add new stuff. The place holders will be where I focus on adding content the next update.

The stuff I added changes a lot depending on your stats, but there isn’t really many choices to make during them. Though there will be a lot more choices for the other stuff happening with the relationship scenes and such. It is only a weeks worth of work, so will take some time to get all those in. Just keep that in mind.

Play

I am not sure if it was a good idea to just make a ton of random combat scenes. Well idea is to add more stuff in between the scenes later on so there is more context, and so that it all works and flows better. Though right now, it is a bit of a mess.

I am a little bit behind on my daily goals since I had a ton of distractions. I also need to get up up early tomorrow because I got an appointment to get a covid shot, so might head to bed early tonight as well. I should still be able to get everything done though, just need to make sure to work hard tomorrow when I get back!

So right now, I am just working on getting a bunch of scenes done. Five today, then five tomorrow and the five the day after. So far the ones today seem a bit random. As I go, I will have to see how I can fit them all together.

Also I am testing some different ways to do it. For example, I can make a scene where if you have fire magic 3+ you get result x, and if have fire magic 1-2 you get result y. Or I can do it where if you have fire magic 3+ and attack 3+ you get X, but if you have fire magic 3+ but attack 1-2 you get Y. The second one gives more different results that are more closely matched to what you have, but is also more time consuming since I am basically writing the same scene over and over with slight variations. Can also break up the scene where one check gives the result for the entire scene, or have multiple checks in the same scene that changes different lines. Again the more detailed and reflective it is of the players skills, the more work it is.

Realistically, the big difference is that if I have to spend a lot of time on smaller details of the scene, the scene is probably going to be shorter than if I just have it lightly influence the scene. Anyway, I am testing that out to try to get a feel for what the best balance is, so writing some really complex scenes that are a bit shorter and some longer one that just make a couple of big checks.

Okay this week I am doing another update for Magic girl contest! I was trying to think of what I should do next in the game, and had the idea of doing like a montage of a bunch of different contest battles. That way you can play through many battles and can really put all the stats and training stuff to use. Though I was thinking it would be good to interspersed other scenes throughout it too, for relationship stuff. So it wouldn’t really be a full montage but just a series of more fast paced action scenes.

Thinking on that a bit more, I think the best way to organize things is to get montage of combat scenes all finished this week. Then for the next update I can add in the relationship stuff and weave them inbetween the scenes. That way I am not trying to swap back and forth and I can focus on each part one at a time. So here are my daily goals:

Tuesday: Finish 5 contest scenes(one scene focused on each magic type; summoning,energy,love,water,fire)
Wednesday: Get to 10 total contest scenes(add a scene focusing on each character; sonia,elena,lisa,isabel,the player)
Thrusday: Get to 15 total contest scenes(add 2 group scenes, 2 scenes focused on your signature move, and a scene to sum up your overall score and tell you how well you are doing in the contests).
Friday: Organize all the scenes and get them to work together, and then release the update.

Also I been thinking about releasing a new update every week, which is what I have been doing. I can definitely do enough content for it to be worth releasing an update in a week’s time, though some times they can be pretty small too. If I do a lot of organizing, planning, or code, then that update might be kind of small content wise, or if it is just a bad week that might be true too. I do like the idea of trying to release something every week though, since releasing updates weekly greatly reduces the risks of getting side track and not updating a game for a really long time. Anyway, I will probably keep doing that for now, at least until I finish the backlog of old games. Though it is just something I was thinking about.

So it is Sunday and been relaxing a bit today. I been playing project zomboid and killing a bunch of zombies. It is kind of an old game but I just got it, even though I still have a bunch of other games I really need to finish first. Also playing a zombie game makes me think of the story I mentioned before that I was writing, about a zombie apocalypse.