When Stars Collide - Side Project Rambles (Patreon)

Helloooo everyone!

Just thought I'd take a little time to ramble about WSC, the main side project. I have been trying really hard to not spend too much time working, even on side projects. 

I've been doing a lot of reading of other things (re-read Howl's Moving Castle recently - I love that book!) and trying to relax. Thinking of looking into replacing my watercolours and starting to paint again too. It's been a long time and I miss it.

But, of course, I'm still working on WSC on weekends and evenings.

This is such a tough project and it's really taught me a lot about game design and games while also challenging a lot of my strategies.  I love that it's been a learning process.

One day I want to write up all my thoughts about various things like game structure. I think it would be really interesting to share them! 

Been working on some things like...getting the customisation in the game so I can test it.

Just kidding. It actually looks like this right now. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I have to stress that it obviously is not meant to look like this. I just needed the selection IN THE GAME. I'll be working with someone else to make the actual customisation screen.

But this at least lets me select things and test them out. 🤣

I also spent a couple of evenings playing around the sprite files. I wanted to give the characters some additional outfits and, while I was at it, made some adjustments to some of the designs. Daaz got the most obvious changes as I increased the visibility of his bioluminescence. I wanted it clear these aren't random sparkles. He literally glows.

Everyone got some additional outfits though. 

I've also acquired some additional BGs. These are coming in at a fairly steady pace.

And of course, writing. Less writing than art, to be honest. I've been doing so much writing for Gilded Shadows that I just want a break from it. Working on coding and art for WSC gives me that much needed reprieve from drafting and editing.

I have been writing some but mostly just planning.

Writing routes concurrently is honestly...really tough. These interconnecting routes are so much more difficult than self-contained routes like Gilded Shadows. It requires a lot more planning and thinking. I was a bit stuck on the writing for a long time, agonising on how to handle the routes. I've finally got that worked out but am replanning a lot of the previously planned content so...💪

Hence all the focus on artwork. 

I don't want another game's writing to stress about. Got the "Stressing over writing" covered already with Gilded Shadows. The only thing I have room on my calendar for is stressing about art. 😤

So anyway, while GS is trundling along on the revision/writing front...WSC is trundling along on the art front. 

I guess when I finally shift to art and coding for Reuben's route, I won't have room on my schedule for WSC for a while since that means I'll probably be focusing on Yuu's writing.

And all my calendar slots for stressing about things will be taken. 🤣 So I have to enjoy it while I can for a few more weeks.

OH! A friend introduced me to a language creating software and I ended up making some unique languages for this game. It all stems from a couple of moments were the MC mentions some words in their native tongue. And I thought it might be nice to have some coherence between the words I was making.

So when I was playing with the software, I ended up with a a few different languages to choose between and ended up giving one of the languages to Daaz, one to Raif and Yren (they're the same species), and then reserve a couple of them for the MC to use.

I mean, this whole thing stems from the MC saying one (1) sentence to Raif in their native tongue and mentioning like...3 additional words. But it's always fun as a world-building exercise to play with languages. Especially in a game like this one where there are multiple species.

This resulted in me doing some extended character profiles and species profiles which I reckon I'll release as patreon exclusive content when the game actually gets off the ground.

Those were pretty fun to work on and I think I'll do something similar for the characters in Gilded Shadows when I work on the lore book for that game.

Anyway, that's all the rambles for now! 

Hope you all enjoy hearing about my so called "late night project" occasionally! 

~Esh