I Had A Dream With Spamton In It

I had a dream with Spamton in it

I could barely sleep last night because my brain decided to be on fire juggling with scenarios and what not, and when finally around 3 AM the system shut down, I had a weird dream...

There were other things in it ngl but the most picturesque thing I saw was Spamton... But it was not fully Spamton, but a friggin' digimon with Spamton's features. The guy looked like enjoying his new form and powers, and wrought some havoc in that random city while at it. What a cute happy villain boi. Why I keep falling for this kind of characters...

I saved that oneiric image in my mind and hope I get some free-time to turn that image into a sketch some day. I'm not sure if there are any other Spamton!Digimon around the place already but what I saw in my dream was kind of cool, unique, but also a tad horrific (depends of your perspective or taste about digimons -- I like Digimon if none have guessed it already lol).

Well, I just wanted to say that, while I'm finishing eating this whole orange which is my current dessert. Oranges are delicious. Lunch break over.

I'm still itching to draw stuff but I can't until I get the PSU this coming week :cri:

I wanted to upload something related to my project even if it's old art. Here's the first sketch study I did of teh guy around January, Spamton after hijacking the body of Swatch. Would go for more iterations but one must start from something. I think this would make his birthday around January 28th, though since they both share the same body, that would make it for 3 anniversaries in a single year, Spamton's around May 3rd and Swatch's is February 19th. Lucky guys! 😅

I'm dying to draw him again... asdkljhfgdfjfkjdkj 😭 <crawls back into the beetle pit>

Edit: I forgot to mention that tomorrow I need to go to a doctor appointment to get some pachymetry done. Apparently the pressure of my eyes is 20/20 or something and they want to check if something is afoot that could end with me getting a glaucoma. I'll 🤞 that they don't find anything of import because the last thing I want is to get eye surgery to make my eyes to drain better the liquid inside them. I don't want any sharp or pointy tools getting any close to my eyes 😰

Playing Computer Surgeon

I apologize for any lack of updates or of activity. This week has been stressful, and let's just leave it like that because I tend to ramble too much about my grievances when I shouldn't do it in front of others.

For a little blessing, the new heart for the computer arrived:

I'm very grateful that my friend went on a limb to buy me the replacement and pay the shipping expenses. If you didn't know yet, the PSU of the computer started to fail in the past two months and giving less and less juice to the components, to the point of disabling the stylus detection of my tablet or not letting me to play any games without the computer blaring fans and overheating like I could cook an egg on top of it. Heck, even playing YouTube videos puts the fans on a fritz.

So... it's time to play surgeon and replace the heart of this old NEO (yeah, I call my computer NEO by no reason apparently <coff coff coff>) with a brand new one with some odd but cool LEDs. I'm a bit scared though because it's been aeons since I fiddled with computer components and I fear that I'm going to break something irreparably and then I'll be cooked because I need the computer to work. But if I don't replace it, NEO will die regardless so... I installed Tumblr on my phone so that I can at least post an update if everything goes south.

And if it goes well, I hope this new PSU will give juice to revive the tablet. If the tablet is still not working after all of this... Well, as Sears would say "Never try to heal the wound before getting it on yourself". I'll go and just channel my inner Spam engineer and just do it. Doing nothing would be far worse anyway.

<goes to make password backups on paper and unplug everything>

A lil of game-devving (first Dev-Log?)

Today some development while we wait for interviews and other confirmations to the job hunting of Friday -- or at least something I can still do with the mouse. (all of the pictures used above on the block-out are just mere placeholders to fill up the empty gaps)

It's GUI prototyping time!

I've seen before in the past that many visual-novels and even some RPGs allow the player to fast forward dialogues and skip back and forth across them if they were already seen. I had a mind of adding these buttons too but in a less default position, to balance a little the visuals of the GUI.

So, the idea is that the upper and bottom sections would show the zone where the current scene is playing, as some sort of decoration ribbon. Since I already planned the height and width of the main screen where the scene and dialog box will appear, there's a ton of empty space around that must be filled with something! I had an idea of making use of that widescreen space not only to hang the dialog buttons, but also to show a split portrait showing the status of the character from where we are having the POV of the scene.

For example, if we are in a scene from the POV of Tasque Manager, her portrait will appear on both sides. These are to show the mental status of the character, as the player takes decisions that could possibly upset the character or make them happier. The idea is to keep track of this as is the only visual cue (if the player isn't taking mental notes of what are they doing with the current character) to see if you are going through a good route or a bad route.

The mental status of the character will also open venues for other dialogues, just like in graphic adventures of old, you could explore questions for the lulz or just cut to the chase to go faster. It can also lock you from knowing more as other characters that you angered on purpose will refuse to elaborate or will reply with something else, or will see you too upset to let them speak up.

This can serve to further move towards a different path. I plan to add different outcomes to certain decisions depending of your behaviour, though upon release only one path will be available as I want to focus on the main plot-line and add the side paths with future updates for those avid to squeeze the lore of its last remaining juices.

In a sense I believe the paths could be categorized in Light, Neutral, Dark and Darker. Obviously the Darker paths would be the ones with the most downers, and might end abruptly or perhaps open a new unseen chapter, as corruption sets itself in the characters. As said, will only add those in the future if the game gets well received and we manage to stabilize our life enough to dedicate myself fully to the project. The default path will be always the Light one by the way.

And nothing else. Must not forget to add quick buttons to Save, Load and Quit To Title... Though adding them to an ESC menu could be redundant, I rather move these buttons tastefully to improve the looks of the general GUI that the players are going to stare at 95% of the time (that's why prototyping the Game's GUI is a very important part of the development). The other parts that should receive some attention would be the Gallery and the Chapter Selection... I was wondering if adding a list of quick jumps to all the scenes could be done, so you could replay your favourite parts again, or go there to pick a different set of dialogues. In a sense the main bones of the game are just that:

Title Screen

Options

Save/Load

Gallery

Chapter Select

Game

Credits/Disclaimer (absolutely skippable after reaching the end of a chapter)

Yeah, 7 bones. I don't see anything else to add. I believe the most fun part to make would be the Chapter Select. My idea for it is quite unusual and I haven't seen it done before. It could work.

I don't have anything else to show or to ponder publicly at the moment. Hope you enjoy to have a lil glimpse on the developing of the visual-novel as I make it from the scratch.

(zoom on the preview and open in new tab to be able to read the info-boxes) Finally, after a lot of back and forth and interruptions, this should be the most updated depiction of Sears, one of the Addison co-workers for which Spam is going to work with on behalf of the conglomerate. Because they were the last one to join the office, Sears is often used by the others as the "legman". Sears doesn't mind this though as they love to be useful to others and doing errands is not much pressure on their schedule.

Sears is a very storied character, so I apologize for the spam of info-boxes 😅Also because their pet has some mild relevance for the plot, I needed to add him within the same profile because they are kind of inseparable (though Sears never notices the creepy side of the glitchy cat they adopted because MIKE tries his best to keep it a secret). Sears gave him the name MIKE because of the "M" the kitty had branded on his back. They are very clueless about the origins of that stray kitty but loves their pet regardless, as MIKE keeps his side of the relationship by acting like the walking anti-depressants cats are known to be 😸(yeah that fur is very fluffy by the way thick short coat but fluffy). Lastly, MIKE is a homage to a real cat and to old data storage devices (punch-cards and floppy disks). There are other more interesting engineering details about him but I'll reserve those for the game when the time comes 👀

As for the logo of PRODINAMI, it should represent the increasing revenue of your company after using the marketing services they sell. It also represents a very stylized Addison and it's inspired by two important companies from the past (I dare anyone to guess which ones when the clues start to appear).

Not much else to say but that I need to keep practicing painting (if RL stops nagging me so much). Gah, I'm [[SO HUNGRY]] I could eat an octorok now...

Happy belated Yaoi Day

“(…) Time and time again, it replayed in my mind like a broken record… All the good days before 1997… All the peace he could finally enjoy and embrace after toiling for ICARUS ever since he had memory — before that thrice dashed old fashioned phone of his started to ring, ruining everything we laboured to achieve in our first year together… We were robbed from our peaceful life and I only have my coward self to blame..." — Sears

I know I'm late by 2 days but I couldn't work on it faster 😞At least it is finished and I'm happy to see them together, even if for that part of the flashbacks.

It's just them, Spam and Sears from when Spam landed at their place to live there as he couldn't live at ICARUS any more without putting his life and memories at risk. Also MIKE loafing like a donut because that's importants too 🐈

I'll start to put tags correctly so that they don't get mixed with other Tumblr-wide tags.