devlog

Hello and welcome to my devlog! This is an introductory entry to give some information about what this game and project is about, so please scroll down to see the most recent entry.

The name of this story is Hitman for Hire. It's a visual novel + sidescroller video game that I'm currently working on. The story follows a hitman, Louis, and the life that comes with his job. Due to his work, he's used to moving all over the country, sometimes even outside of it, and this time it's no different. A large corporation, which Louis closely works with, has tasked him with the job to eliminate 7 people all located in the city of Los Angeles, 7 hit targets. Louis takes it, it's a big job after all that's sure to pay him well. He leaves the next morning. He settles into an apartment, it's a lowly apartment complex, but he doesn't mind it too much. Before his arrival, Louis spoke with an old friend. The friend offered him a job at a convenience store he owns near the residence Louis would be staying in. He accepts the offer, it serves as a good outlet for him to learn more about the people around him and it lets him keep his real identity more on the down low. For the next few days, Louis gets settled into his new home and workplace. But as he knows, he's here for a reason. So he soon begins his plan to get the job done.

This is the basic introduction to the story. After this, the story will be separated into chapters. All of these chapters will focus on one of Louis' targets. By the end of the chapter, the player will have the choice to eliminate or spare the target. The choices made will lead to different routes. The game and its story will be very character focused. It focuses a lot on character interactions and the choices you make. I'm hoping to include mechanics such as investigations to learn more about the targets and a relationship system (very surface level). The genres are dark comedy and psychological horror.

This project is still very much a work in progress. I basically also restarted development because I was kind of unsatisfied with my current progress... Please check back here if you're interested in more updates, and to read my yappings because I love info-dumping about this lol.

It's been a while around here. But also this page has been down for a while lmao. I was thinking of fixing it but since I was in the process of re-working my pages I decided to just leave it as is until I finish the re-worked code. So here is the new devlog page.

To be honest, this project is an on and off type of thing. Sometimes I work on it and sometimes I don't. I haven't done much with it for a while so there aren't any new updates for it. I've also just been busy with other stuff, including this website, so it's kind of been pushed to the side. I mentioned that I was currently working on the character overworld sprites. I still am, they're all fully rigged and just need to be animated, but animation got hands so I've struggled a bit to do those. I've also been thinking that it would be a way better idea to write the whole story before I actually start the game development process. I did say previously I had all major story beats done but I'm also a perfectionist and did not really enjoy some of the story parts I wrote. I'm not rewriting the story as a whole, the concept is still very much the same, but I do want to rewrite the contents of certain chapters. I also want to flesh out those chapters rather than just having a summary of them. I have this weird idea that I hold on to when I share stuff relating to my story and characters which is to not share too much so that there's no 'spoilers'. But girl that's literally pointless and there's not even that many people who read this stuff lmao, also I wanna yap more. I might not share everything but I do want to share some ideas and concepts I have for the story here since I don't think I'll start the actual game dev stuff too soon.

Anyways, working on this story and the moodboards I've made for it has made me very sad and nostalgic for the 2000s my god. I'm literally obsessed with those silly little video game ads from the 2000s.

Previously, I was making my game in RPG Maker MZ. I bought in on Steam and had been getting pretty used to it. It's pretty simple, doesn't even require that much coding, most of that being done by plug-ins. So, I started making my game there. It was very slow progress. I was adding the different character overworld sprites to the game and adding in the map images, I was also testing some basic features like the visual novel elements. At the same time, I was making the art for my game, particularly unique character sprites, which was very time consuming. Overall, I was just taking my time and kept learning the more I did.

After some time, I wanted to expand on more features for my game, like the UI for example. However, from this I realized how limited RPG Maker is for making games. I probably should have expected this by how simple and beginner-friendly the program is, but it did make me overthink my project. There were other things I didn't really like about RPG Maker that I had noticed over time. A major thing was the resolution. Since RPG Maker is pretty much built for pixel art, my game's style did not fit it, literally. I had to scale down my drawings so they worked, but they also ended up looking very blurry and low-quality. Little things like this began to pile up until it made me want to restart the while thing. It sucked because I had already payed for RPG Maker MZ, it was a discount fortunately. But another thing was that if I wanted to have more control over my game and its visuals, I would need to use a program that required coding. My game is pretty simple, 2D side scroller with visal novel elements, and maybe a few minigames and other features sprinkled in. But still, I would need to learn a whole new coding language. I enjoy learning new programs/things, but I have a feeling this might be just a bit more difficult.

So, what now? Well, I've stopped working with RPG Maker MZ. I've been thinking of using Godot for making my game, but haven't started yet. Right now, I'm currently working on some of the visual features that will kind of serve as the bones of my game. This is the character overworld sprites and some parts of the map. I've been learning and using Spine 2D to make the sprites. Although it takes a while to understand, it's actually pretty simple once you do. I'm currently making the main character animations, obviously very essential to the game, and the remaining character's idle animations. Once I've done that, I want to draw a bit more of the map. And once I've finished that, I want to start using Godot and build the basic foundation of my game. Story-wise, I've already written the major story beats and have planned each chapter out. I'll need to write each individual dialogue soon, which is kind of intimidating ngl. I'm pretty excited to restart my game and make it something I really love and enjoy. This is my passion project and I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to this stuff, but I hope to keep moving forward and updating regularly here!