Cards of Gluttony Dev Log #17 [26/07/2024]

After recovering from a particularly rude illness and finishing university, I finally got to jump right back into development this month!

Originally I was hoping to release the update around this time, but unfortunately that will have to wait until next month as things are nowhere ready for a proper release. I've really spread myself out thin with so many independent storylines and various side content, it'll be quite a challenge to attend to all of them at the same time.

In the meantime, allow me to satiate your curiosity with a few sneak-peeks:

Back on the MQ grind

I've had quite a lot of fun playing around with the writing this time around, things might get a little saucy. To pique your interest a little, here's a screenshot from the upcoming main quest:

"Opening your eyes, you took your surroundings in as you slowly pieced together what had just happened to you."

There's not much else to show off when it comes to the main quest as that will all have to be left for when you experience it in-game, so let's take a look at the other things I've been working on!

Sown and ready to reap

In the previous full development log, I shared an image of the shop clerk from the general store, all geared up and ready to be in charge of the community garden.

At the time, the gardening minigame was only in its early stages, but it is now finished and fully functional! Have a little screenshot:

 (That's gardening alright.)

An image speaks a thousand words, so then that means a video will speak a million. I've a added a little demo video of the gardening process to the attachments, so go take a peek at that!

In the gardening minigame, you will find yourself visiting the community garden to water and take care of the plants. As mentioned in one of the previous logs, it's designed to work alongside the new forest minigame, which will now yield two types of random seeds.

It's not a particularly in-depth gardening simulation, as it's just meant to spice things up a bit by giving you one more thing to spend your in-game time with. It's designed to be as simple and straight-forward as possible:

• The plants need to be watered every 4 days, meaning you don't have to worry about visiting the garden every day.

• However, if you decide to stop by during the days in-between, you'll be able to take care of the plants by getting rid of weeds or ridding them of insects. Doing so will shorten the growth time a little.

For now, the plants all use the same sprites for the various stages of growth, with the item icon appearing when a plant is fully grown, but perhaps a unique sprite for each plant is a bit of an overkill for what is essentially a small distraction in the form of a minigame.

Developing this minigame was an interesting digression from the rest of the game, as it required me to work a little bit with the physics and collision system. As the rest of the game contains mostly slow, turn-based controls centered around menus, this is the first time I got to dip into aspects such as collision, hitboxes, placement and movement... and I also just had a bunch of fun with the particle effects.

When working on the interactions, I focused on making the controls feel nice and satisfying, with snappy animations and responsive sound effects. A fun little detail is the different manner in which the various tools work. If you look at the demo video, you'll notice they each have a different control scheme and hitbox:

• The watering can needs to be aligned above the planters, and is used by holding down the mouse button.

  

• The gardening glove has its hitbox slightly to the right, and is activated when you release the mouse button to actually pluck the weeds.

  

• The bug spray has its hitbox to the left, and is activated when you press down the mouse button, simulating pressing down on the spray's nozzle.

  

These are all minute details that I'm sure most people won't even notice, but nevertheless, I'm very happy with how I managed to implement them!

Gardening, with a dash of plot

And of course much like fishing, gardening will be accompanied by a slowly unfurling plotline happening every few visits you pay to the garden. Obviously the shop clerk who is in charge of the community garden will be at the helm of it, but we could use some more faces to tell a proper story.

The story outline has already been drafted, and the character sprites are in the early works, so for now I will leave you with this sketch:

Who is this disheveled man, and how does he play into the story? Only time will tell. I can however tell you, that as part of this storyline, there will a One-sided battle.
(... wow, I really need to think of a better name for that.) 

Now that the One-sided battle system is a thing, it is time for me to sprinkle those throughout the various plotlines. So far, the two situations it appeared in were ones where the player was goaded by someone else to do it (Cedric and Ricky). This time, you can look forward to a more mischievous use of it!

It took me a bit to figure out what I wanted to do with the gardening storyline... and the main quest storyline as well, for that matter. The reason for this is that I'm far more meticulous about the game now compared to when the project first started. This is both a good thing, as I feel the upcoming content is much more polished and compelling than previous updates from both a technical and artistic standpoint, but it also means it's been giving me a bit of a headache behind the scenes... which is what I'd like to talk about next!

The writer's room, or: a brief rant on the storytelling of CoG

One thing that I enjoy about Cards of Gluttony is that despite its premise, it is ultimately quite a narratively dense game... if that wasn't obvious from the numerous independent plotlines and amount of branching paths. However, as I continue to write for the game, I've become increasingly more and more aware of the absolute pitfall that I've written myself into, by creating the setup that I have for the game.

Many of the scenes in the game fall into the common video game problem of "we need to have gameplay, the gameplay is fighting, therefore every problem needs to be solved by fighting". This ends up creating a lot of situations where characters are aggressive and attack you for no reason, or for unconvincing reasons, as a way to lead up to the fight. This often feels very forced and also very same-y and uninspired.

(Just a few of the times people attacked you for no reason.)

Cards of Gluttony also has the additional hurdle of... not really being about traditional, physical fights. How often do you end up in situations where the easiest solution isn't to simply physically overpower your opponent? You may have noticed with the way specific details and rules of the world are written, that I have at least attempted to mitigate these issues by giving reasons as to why this isn't possible. The One-sided battles added in the previous update also helped alleviate this a bit, by presenting an alternative way for situations to unfold.

But either way, there's still a lot about the game's narrative that I haven't figured it out yet. However, I have done quite a bit of worldbuilding and brainstorming behind the scenes recently, which I'm excited to show off in some of the future scenes. I am also ultimately quite happy with how the main quest and gardening stories turned out, as I was able to come up with some fresh ideas (for the game), so you can look forward to that!

And that brings us to the end of the rant. Really, all I wanted to do was jot down my thoughts and struggles I run into while writing for the game, while also giving you a peek into aspects of development that might not necessarily be visible in the final game itself. Hopefully you found my musings to be at least the slightest bit interesting!

So what's left?

As we close in on the next release, I should perhaps recount what still needs to be done:

• Finish writing and wrap up everything needed for the upcoming main quest.

• Finish assets and write all the encounters for the first batch of gardening plotline. 

• Finish the Journal.
  

  (The UI ended up getting a bit of a make-over!)
  
  First shown off in DevLog #15, writing the journal entries has proven to be quite a challenge. I've had to re-read the stories, their branching possibilities, as well as dig through the various flags that the game uses to actually track what happens. I got particularly choked on the recent Pub MQ, which I may have made a bit too branching for my own good... Nevertheless, there's still a significant chunk of journal writing that needs to be done. But better late than never, as this would become a herculean task if I left it for later.

• I have also yet to finish the new overworld music, as well as the boss music that I shared in the previous logs. Those might be moved to a later date as they aren't exactly essential, and I've been taking my time with those to make sure they are up to par with what I want.

• Additionally, a few of the existing storylines could use a continuation. These might not necessarily be big additions with a lot of gameplay and battles happening, but rather narrative build-up to future plans I have for many of them.
  In particular, Ikem's gym hangouts could use a scene where you discuss the aftermath of the whole pub debacle, and Darwin's newly added fishing hangout needs scenes similar to Ted's where you'll get to know him better.
  

And that brings us to the end

There won't be any Card of the Month this time as I haven't added any new cards since the last two for the main quest. Since the pub MQ saw quite a few new cards added, I realized it might be time to slow down and be a bit more careful about what kind of effects I add into the game.

Well. And on that stray ending thought, as usual: thank you for reading and for supporting the project!