Developer diaries #7 - June-August 2022

Entry 7

A three-month break has just taken place on the fangame, and the same goes for this logbook.

From the beginning of April to mid-June, the project suffered from zero productivity in pixel art and coding. Since I knew this would stall development, I made the decision to delay the goals and give the whole team a break.
Then towards the end of June, when my motivation came back and I wanted to end my break, I was prevented from coming back by workcamps and IRL outings (improvement of the henhouse, photovoltaic installation, barbecues, swimming, association life …). It's the summer vacations effect and I'm not the only one of the team to have had less availability. It may seem paradoxical, but yes: summer are not synonymous with higher productivity, because we all want to enjoy the sunny days.

I still ensured a minimal presence in order to manage and optimize the few advances there were (including a nice breakthrough in pixel art); but the external communication was significantly reduced, as evidenced by the few news on Deviantart.


Coding

Gas has just left Discord for good and unfortunately never had the time to contribute to the project. By domino effect, potential new programmers, who needed a lead and a mentor (Gas in this case), are also unable to contribute to the project.
So, there are officially no programmers left, except myself who can only do limited high-level coding (= what is the furthest down the programming chain). In three months, I will have just fixed some minor bugs, nothing significant.
In the meantime, any change of direction in programming (migration to Essentials or Godot, switch to HD graphics) is highly compromised …


Pixel art: Dracoyan our savior!

Since the beginning of April, there has been no news from Frillecho. Even worse: it turned out that all those who had pixel art skills were either unmotivated or unavailable. As a result, there was a total blockage of pixel art for 2 and a half months.

Salvation came on June 23rd, the 4th anniversary of the project. Seeing that pixel art was still in a dead end, Dracoyan offered to unblock the situation. He accomplished the feat of doing all this in two months:
– Complete set of the regional Larvesta
– Complete set of the regional Volcarona
– OW of the bard
– OW of the bardess
– OW of the herbalist
– OW of the herald
– OW of the male merchant
– OW of the female merchant
– OW of the female apprentice blacksmith
– OW of the female blacksmith
– OW of the female miner
– OW of the Augur Aedan
– OW of the Augur Erwana
(+ WIP of the Cerridwyn Augur's OW)

So, all the NPCs in Tintignac have been completed, except for the two teenagers. This breakthrough gave us hope!

Thunungu also made the OW of Marasque, because this Fakemon will be visible in the Thane Kerdus’s Manor in Tintignac.
Pixelcraft also took the initiative to make a front for Galarian Meowth, as he particularly liked this regional form.

For logistical reasons, none of this pixel art has been revealed publicly, but it will be soon.


Artworks: reduced progress with some initiatives

The NPCs of Tintignac

As the artworks were not the limiting factor, their creation rate could be reduced without impacting the development... That said, I still wanted to finish a very old goal, drawing the 4 remaining NPCs of Tintignac:
– The miner (female)
– The blacksmith
– The teenager (boy)
– The teenager (girl)

The miner was drawn by Eysselia at the end of July and the blacksmith by Cataclyptic in early August.
… Except that the teenagers, requested in priority after the blacksmith, have still not been made. Initially, it was Cataclyptic who was supposed to make them, but a series of IRL unavailabilities prevented him from working on these NPCs. So, it was decided that Eysselia would take care of them (Dracoyan is waiting for the artworks to do the OWs).

Aerouna is still not finished, because KiriariSan had some limiting factors on the IRL side. Nevertheless, the design is in the final stages of shading.

Fakemons in backstage and an Augur in bonus



Of course, there were not only two drawings of humans in 3 months. Artworks of Fakemons were made backstage, but none of them were revealed due to the fact that the strategic info was never realized (because of the block on the database). Among them are the lineage of Scolipede and Gigalith, designed by Eysselia and SplittingJaws respectively.

At the same time, Eysselia took the initiative to make the Augur of the Lake Guardians, as she was inspired to draw clergy. This is not regretted, as Dracoyan has already started to make the Cerridwyn’s OW.

A spontaneous application

A guy named KanekiVirtual told me he wanted to join the team about ten days ago and has a preference for drawing Fakemon, especially if a sketch is already provided (the concept phase is not his strong point). It turns out that he will make a perfect synergy with SplittingJaws, who excels in concept creation, but has a little more difficulty when it comes to finishing his drawings.


The challenge: regain lost inertia

Today, my goal is to get back to the rhythm of development that we had in the spring. This is done by reviving team members who have been left to rest, returning to public communication and gradually returning to a normal presence on Discord. I hope to finish with the moves’ database and move on to something more fulfilling like the Tintignac staging, now that I have almost all the graphic resources.
No doubt the rest of the team feels the same way and would love to see the demo come to life with additional content.