games should look ugly in development
i complain a lot on this blog, don't i? let's complain some more anyway.
something that's always annoyed me somewhat is how commercialisation (maybe misuse of the word here but i'm sure you get the gist) has forced a lot of "in progress" screenshots of games to look beautiful and polished. especially as someone who is not capable of creating art for a game (well, if i want the finished product to look good), it makes me feel a little crazy for people to post photos of their 1-month progress on a game and have something that has custom ui, main character art done, or even custom music already that it seems like we now have this ridiculous standard of what in progress games should look like.
it feels similar to how the concept of a sketchbook is now something that has be full of complete and finished artworks and not, you know, sketches, or works in progress, or half-baked ideas. social media is obviously the big driver of this change, with that bringing on the rise of self-employed artists who have to make all of it look good or else everyone will get bored when it's at the "trust the process" stage and move on to something else.
maybe i'm just making up standards that most people don't actually feel and it doesn't really matter since it's all self-imposed anyway. and/or i'm just jealous. lol. basically what i'm trying to say is if you are like me and your game looks like dogshit when you're working on it until you're able to get artists involved, or even just until you can be bothered to start making it pretty once the basic functionality is down, don't feel bad. it's supposed to look like that. you all have to start from somewhere, etc. etc.
anyway that was a long-winded way of preparing you for the awful screenshot i'm about to share, but will do regardless because this is a diary first and foremost and i'm just tracking how i'm getting things working.
the font should give you a hint of the actual aesthetic direction it will end up going in... so what are we looking at here? things i have managed to figure out as a first time renpy user:
- box that displays text that will continue to pile up and can be scrolled through (hardest part to work out so far)
- define custom positions for character portraits (white boxes up top are portraits as well)
- overlay transparent border to portraits (which can also be animated)
- include character emotions within border and default layers of portraits
- add typing sound effects (i used this great example script)
now i just need to adjust the quick menu (the menu buttons down the bottom of the screen) to fit in with the rest of the ui and i have my basic set up achieved. which is great because i have lots of variations of this ui layout i would like to use for future games so the fact i was able to achieve it at all means i can hopefully make lots of things more easily.
now to actually continue on with writing the damn game...