CUPdates 5: Story Outline, Character Sprites, and Locations

We had three weeks to work on CUPdates, so I ended up finishing a lot more than usual. My goal was to just finish the story outline, but without images to accompany the outline, that would've been kinda boring. So I made a lot of concept sketches to figure out locations, character progressions, and more!

So after the last CUPdate, I got some feedback from my friends on the dialogue boxes. These were the results:

I did a few more tests based on the favorite ones, because the winner (4) wasn't quite sticking with me. So I made these ones:

Based on the initial reactions from a couple of my friends, I decided to go with either D or H. So I made some more tests with those two, to test out the longest character name (that I could think of) in the game, as well as a different color style. I think I've finally settled on which one I want (2), but these were the two options:

I also imported all of these art assets into the game and animated the different assets to see what it would look like in-game! I'm still tweaking the timing, and I'm not 100% sure on the actual dialogue box, but I'm progressing with this. I also need to tweak the font because it uses quotes as apostrophes for some reason.

After that, I decided to start thinking about the story more so that I could plan out where to go next. I planned out detailed story beats in the form of a Twine story, so I could listen to the music that plays at the same time as writing out these descriptions. It helped me really start to enjoy this new path that the story is taking.

Then I planned even bigger. I made a Notion page with the main Eventure/Chapters, and broke down some of the big plot points. Then I planned out when each character comes into the story and decided who was to be an optional character, and who was required for the story to progress. I also fully planned out locations and which ones were required vs. optional. Once I had all of that, I figured out a timeline and how much time passes in the story. I also found places where I could include time skips, so that more time does progress.

Because I realize a lot of time goes by in this story, I decided that I want to have costume changes and height changes throughout the story. I realize this is probably a huge wishlist and I'll be lucky if I include 2 different costumes per character, but I think it'd be really cool to include. So I started to put together drawings I have of my characters in their various costumes and determined what point these costumes are worn throughout the story. I haven't finished this obviously, but it's something I plan to work on more at some point.

Then I decided to sketch out a character lineup sheet to show size comparisons between all of the characters that are planned to make an appearance in the prologue. There will probably be a few more characters, but these ones have story moments planned already.

From there, I started to think about my biggest struggle: Backgrounds. I started by going into The Sims and built the Ragger/Braves house so I could have some 3D references of what I want the background to look like. I did this a while back with the Saku house here, and it helped a lot, so I wanted to do that again!

Before getting into drawing the interiors for these bigger house locations, I decided to start with one of the smaller ones: Rocko's cabin. So I tried out a more perspective look, referencing some Mother 3 and Deltarune backgrounds as inspiration.

Something felt off and the characters didn't seem to fit into the backgrounds from their current perspective and I wasn't really happy with how it was looking. So I tried redrawing from more of a front view instead, and I think it works a lot better with the characters, so this is the direction I'll likely take for interiors, going forward.

And then I added colors to that test to try and get a quick sense of if this was working or not. I think for right now this seems like a good direction to go in, since it's more simplified and quicker to draw. Because backgrounds are a struggle for me, I think going more simple with them will really help out a lot in the long run.

I started to draw the other maps that appear throughout the prologue. I started with expanding upon the Mayon Woods some more, so I designed the forested area that Nick takes The Nays to for hiding.

And then I planned out the cave that Capillstation guards and what the portal area looks like.

Then I decided, for now, I'm going to stick with the beginning of the game being the flashback scene where Rocko and Haru fight to become a World Leader in the World Leader Exam, so I designed the room that they start in.

And I also drew the battle platform, based on an old sketch of this area that my brother drew of this location.

I had this idea to create intro screens for every character that you meet in the game. Maybe it'll only be this dramatic for party members, but I do really want some kind of intro to show the characters when they're introduced for the first time, to help keep track of characters.

Then I did a test where I made a sketchy walk cycle of all directions for Gair so that I could get a better feel for the types of angles I want to go for. I also updated the map of North Harbor to be a bit smaller.

And then I decided to get back into the programming side, so I revisited my battle system a bit. I was looking for a plugin that could add health bars above events that are controlled by variables, but I couldn't find any, so I decided to just program my own from scratch with events and JavaScript. Thanks to Eliaquim's help on the RPG Maker forums, I was able to figure out how to get the health bar moving smoothly and being attached to the event on the map!

This is an old gif before it was fully working: