DEV LOG 005

2-25-2024

All out of cat puns now…

… just kitten! 🐱

GENERAL STUFF:

As I work my way through another week of work on Catsquerade, I thought I might talk a bit about productivity and time management. It’s something that I think a lot of game devs making projects in their spare time can struggle with- I know I do! It’s hard to make time for game work, tough to keep motivation going, and, for solo devs or team leaders, can also be difficult to direct energy and focus across multiple areas that need attention.

I realized I forgot to mention this program in the list of programs/tools from the dev log two weeks ago (apologies!) so I’ll talk a bit about it here instead. This is another very useful tool that has been helping with production!

I’ve been using Clockify to help keep track of the time I put into Catsquerade. It’s nice to look back on and be able to see how much time I dedicated where, but more importantly, I like to be able to look back and see how much I’ve put in. It may not help everyone, but it helps me stay motivated!

To date, I have clocked about 60 and a half hours working on Catsquerade. I started using Clockify after I had done some of the initial outlining of the project and some of the early sketches/trial artwork, so it’s not an exact amount, but I imagine it’s pretty close, give or take 5 or 6 hours. 

As for how much longer I have to go- it’s hard to estimate, especially as this is my first solo game project and extra things pop up from time to time (like the characters banners for Itch - not necessary, but a fun addition), but I feel like I’m more than half-way done. Perhaps about 75% done, depending on how many bloops there are with scripting/programming.

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PROGRESS REPORT:

Since the previous Dev Log update, I have made the following things for Catsquerade:

WRITING:

-  N/A

GUI:

- DONE ✓

ART:

- Background finished: courtyard garden at night, with dark and light version

- Resized all of Fido’s sprites (they were too big for Ren’Py’s screen)

- Resized Waiter 2’s sprites to fit better standing in front of the bar

PROGRAMMING:

- Finished scripting Felixia’s meeting scene

- Finished scripting the courtyard garden scene

- Started scripting Fido’s meeting scene

- Added the new background into the game, with some effects (zoom/shake)

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SOME FAILURES:

Things that didn’t go too well in production.

- Somehow I was using different sized canvases in CSP for the sprites- the first few were small (and a good size to put directly in Ren’Py). But when I went to add Fido’s sprite into the game they were massive! The entire screen was just his fluffy crotch lol. I had to go in and manually resize all of his various expression sprites so they fit on screen. It took a while. (And I may have to do the same for Jefurry’s sprites too)

- The courtyard background was coming along nice… until the shading! Uck, it looks so muddy. I spent a while trying to fix it, but I think it’s the best it can be with my current art abilities. I’ll have to learn more.

SOME SUCCESSES:

Things to celebrate :)

- All backgrounds are now finished! And more than half of the sprites are done (main character, jefurry, fido, two waiters, and the concierge). Just two more to go and the art will be finished.

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GOING FORWARD:

Within the next few weeks, I’d ideally like to:

- Finish the final two character sprites (fluffy and felixia)

- Finish writing the script

- Continue adding the script into Ren’Py

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That’s all for now- thanks for stopping by and for supporting Catsquerade!