Cards of Gluttony Dev Log #10 [11/10/2023]

After a bit of downtime to recover after releasing 0.3, it is now time to get back on the grind!

This is pretty much the first time since the game came out that all of the systems are in place, so I can finally focus on writing and adding more content to the game instead of juggling it at the same time with programming and implementing new features.

Next up on the chopping block

There are already quite a lot of characters in the game, and for a lot of them, it's always been the plan to have a battle with them. The biggest time sink for this has always been the creation of all the sprites for the various weight stages, and so most of the characters only have the one sprite, with the rest being done once I get around to actually implementing their fight itself.

And so today, I bring you a preview of the next character to get some extra mass: Norman!

Is Norman already a Fattener? Why would he even challenge you to a battle? Or did someone else do this to him? You'll have to find once the update comes out, but I'll let you know at the very least that this will occur as part of the next job you do for the SG. These are intended to be the main storyline that drive the overall plot of the game forward, a main quest of sorts!

That's not all!

It's the return of our favorite rude boy, Cedric! (questionable)

Only having that measly 16 Wgt limit during the first fight, it's about time we got to see this guy really start to blow up. This is him at 24 Wgt, by the way, and he's likely going to have at least one more stage before I'm calling it enough.

When I first wrote Cedric, he was intended to be a recurring rival of sorts. I didn't manage to fit him into any of the events that happen in 0.3 (except for a short cameo at the gym), but rest assured, he will enjoy a triumphant return in the upcoming storyline.

As a bit of a behind-the-scenes note: Cedric was, alongside the player character, the first sprite drawn for the game: meaning it is nearly a year old. Before then, I had not yet figured out a proper workflow to efficiently make them, so it was quite a surprise to open up his file after all this time! You can even see the background is a blue-ish tint rather than the gray. Rest assured, a bit of organisational work and editing had to be done to bring his sprite files up to par with the rest of the models!

In news unrelated to making guys fatter

The initial release of v0.3 had a small, but lightly entertaining bug when you invite Beau to go to the gym together: it just... cut off after you asked. What should have happened instead was a short message that it isn't finished yet, and this has since been fixed.

And of course the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I've started making headway into implementing that. The first thing on the agenda? Giving Beau some exercising clothes!

Similarly to you, there's no way the same set of clothing can fit him across the entire range of weight he can be at, so he'll have separate clothes for when he's slimmer and for when he's bursting at the seams! Plursdott stores should really start stocking bigger sizes though...

And to mix it up, an unfamiliar face!

This one's even framed against an actual background in the game instead of floating in the gray void of work-in-progress!

Who could this person be? What's their deal? Well the only info I can tell you is that this is related to this upcoming main quest! Most of the outline for what happens in this quest is roughly done, and so far it's looking to be the longest one compared to the forest and bakery events.

And perhaps the only non-art related news in this log

I'll be adding a setting for flipping between metric/imperial measurements in the game.

"But wait!", some of you might be thinking, "the game never shows you any specific numbers for weight does it? It's just... Wgt."

I chose to use Wgt over any actual measurement unit because it allows me to write all the various dialogue without having to worry about accurately reflecting the weight... and it would also be quite a nightmare to have to think about converting between metric and imperial, especially when it comes to the actual card game with very specific numbers.

That being said, there are still mentions of weight in dialogue and flavor text, you may have noticed the flickering between the use of both pounds and kilos in the many lines of the game. Well that was just a compromise, seeing as we use metric where I'm from, I still found myself liking a lot of the gainer talk more when using the word "pounds" (must be something about the mostly US-centric gainer content I've read over the years!)

To make it not too strange I actually tried making the use of kilos/pounds consistent with each character - leaving it as a matter of preference for individual characters. I guess this sort of works, but I'd say I was mostly overthinking it. A more standard consistency that a settings option provides will be better in the long run.

Oh no I forgot about the Card of the Month!

Hi, hello, so I've added this section here at the last minute, since I completely forgot about it! However, I haven't added any new cards to the game yet, so this month, we'll have a look at one of my drafts instead!

Pin down
Opponent recovers 1 less Energy for every 12 Wgt you have (3 turns).
"Hard to move around when you're pinned down by all of my fat on your face, huh?"

That flavor text is quite spicy... when I wrote this idea down, the intention was to have it be part of Gordon's deck when you finally get to duke it out with him. It might be a while before that happens though, as I definitely want to build up to it quite a bit.

Insert end here

And that's all I have for today! As I said at the start, since I am now moving more into writing and adding more storylines, these logs will likely start looking more like these sneak-peeks going forward.

I'll avoid talking about any actual spoilers: you can tell I tried to be mostly vague when it came to what these will be used for. But who knows, maybe some of you would prefer if I got more into detail about what's going to happen?

Either way, as always, thank you for reading and for supporting the project!