Devlog Week 2

Hullo. This is the first development log for Last Meal at Cafe Mori.

As people who frequent the same Discord servers I've been active in since the lockdown in Canada will be aware of, my laptop's drive (the one containing my personal work) broke several weeks before the start of the Spooktober Jam. After a lot of technical support, and a lot of headaches, the result was getting a new laptop, grabbing as many intact files from a damaged drive backup, and losing almost 2 months worth of work, including but not limited to:

• Various project notes.
• Work-in-progress artwork.
• A DnD campaign I was making progress on designing.
• And an unpublished Artemis Fowl/Good Omens/Bones crossover fic that I had hoped would be particularly amusing.

I was luckily able to grab copies of:

• My progress on Winning Hearts, my upcoming game collaboration with HusbandoGoddess.
• Project "Fae Mafia," my upcoming game collaboration with Coda.
• Halcyon Cafe, my ongoing podcast series.
• My notes for the Spooktober Jam.

So these projects haven't been hurt by the laptop crash.

This means that I wasn't able to prepare for the Spooktober Jam as much as I would have liked to, leading me to make a lot of design choices in a short amount of time.

Not being able to use the laptop for several days/weeks, I drew concept art in one of my notebooks. Here is the gargoyle character:

I'm also in the process of reinstalling programs to the replacement laptop.

So anyway, this is why I hate Windows 10 Updates with a passion you can only dream of.

We are at the end of week 2 now, and have made a lot of progress:

• The script has been written.
• The script has been proofread, with fixes added.
• Speck has programmed a script for the visual novel's baking minigame.
• I've received a music track from our musician, Tav.
• The voice acting spreadsheet has been filled out. Instructions for the spreadsheet are being written.
• I've received the majority of voice acting test lines to give feedback on.
• The background art, and some of the CGs and GUI art has been completed.

After finishing Dear Devere for the last game jam I participated in, I'm trying out some new things for Last Meal at Cafe Mori:

• As I was writing the script, I also wrote voice direction notes underneath each line of dialogue.
• I've decided to teach myself Clip Studio Paint for this project. The art assets are sketched out in PS, and then painted in CSP.

My plans for Week 3 are as follows:

• Complete as much of the remaining art assets as possible (character sprites, GUI, items, etc).
• Send out the voice acting spreadsheet and instructions to the voice actors.
• Write a list of sound effects the game needs and collect audio files for them.
• Send out completed (or temporary) GUI art assets to the programmer.

That's all for now,

Turrah!