Mochi Moshi Dev Log #6

Good October everyone!!!

I'd like to start this weeks developer log with a fun little chart! Hopefully this will put into perspective how long the game is going to take to make, how far we are into the game's progress, and how me and my co-writer are amping up to finish one of the main chunks of the game.

This is a pie graph illustrating all of the major sections the game has, how long it's projected to take in the grand scheme of the whole project, and color coded based on what major phase of development it is. As you can see here on the far right, the big blue chunk represents the "Writing" phase of the game's development.

That's where we are, literally the start of the whole development cycle. Well not quite the start. I did leave out the initial planning, character development and the "where do we begin" section of the development which also would have been in the blue section, but lets pretend that'd be about as big as the "Planning out the drawings" section.

The absolute largest amount of time allotted to this project is going to be the most visible to you guys, that's the part where I actually draw the character and other art. Why am I not drawing Kazumi right now in the middle of writing the story? I don't want to devote all of my time on every aspect of Mochi Moshi all at once and burn out myself. I'm one person, with a single co-writer. This game is going to take a bit of time to make while keeping sanity and making sure it turns out as great as it needs to be.

The final chunk is the actual creation of the game, this is where we take everything made in the Writing phase and the Art Creation phase, smush them together, and then a game comes out. Think of it like making a baby, it takes a while after conception to actually cook and produce the child. This is why the "Game Development" part of well... this game's development, it significant still. Anyone can write something in a google doc and string them together ala a powerpoint esque point and click adventure. It takes a bit more effort to make sure the game runs, looks and preforms as flawlessly as intended.

This chart is not at all representative of the final amount of time it'll all take. There's a reason there's no projected time associated to the chunks here. The game development chunk could take longer, the writing chunk could take slower etc etc... There's a lot going into this, this is a huge project, this isn't my first complete development cycle, but it is still a lot to pick up a project.

Actual things that could change the time presented here is gameplay mechanics being implemented taking a lot longer to properly display, as well as UX being a bit more finicky than projected. These are all problems that could make the Yellow chunk, the final chunk, of the project take a bit longer. Lets just say we shouldn't worry about that until we get to it. That and I have backup plans to make sure things go as smoothly as they can.

If you have any questions about this project or what was presented here today feel free to dm me on any platform including here on Patreon, comment below, or just whatever! Thanks for supporting me this far and I look forward to presenting you guys another progress report on the project in about two weeks. This is not the only project report happening in October so if you were disappointed or expecting more about the story hold on a bit. If you did like this progress report and like the ins and outs of developmental planning and the actual cycle that we're going through thanks a whole lot!

I don't really have plans on what content goes into these Dev Logs as they're more diaries of how the project is going and how much I wanna tell you how things are going. Eventually when we hit towards the end of the writing cycle I wanna send you guys a route node fully written. So far there's about 6 nodes fully written, so I don't wanna have you guys taste them yet...

Thanks again for your patience and have a wonderful October! See you in about two weeks or so with another dev log!