Postmortem: Sparkle☆Decor

Hello there! Otoke here, the project and programming lead for Sparkle☆Decor. I hope you’ve enjoyed the game so far. It’s one of my proudest works yet!

Today I’ll be talking about the development of our game starting from planning up to our submission.

Inspirations & Ideas

The main sources of inspiration were web MMOs (Fantage, Pixie Hollow Online, etc.). I always loved exploring the cute little places and outfits in these games, and there were so many of them to explore! Now though, I barely see site like those around anymore, and it makes me a bit sad.

A whole generation of children missing out on peak.

I was also inspired by the numerous cute isometric games and rooms I saw on Pinterest. Gosh, they’re so cute.

Pre-jam

To be honest, I was very indecisive about whether to join or not. I didn’t have a fleshed-out idea as I usually did before jams. But also, I never participated in NaNoRenO before, it seemed so fun. But again, no jam idea.

This cycle continued up to one week before the jam started. At that point, I said “eff it. LET’S DO IT!”

One of my biggest desires was to create a dress-up game, and this was my chance! So I wrote up a very, very rough idea and started the recruitment!

Team Recruitment

Our team was assembled within 1 week before the jam. It was surprisingly fast, but given that the jam was nearing, it made sense.

The team was much larger than I had anticipated. Additionally, I wasn’t the lead writer this time.

Production

For the most part, I’d say it went well. Most of the hiccups would be on my part due to little planning.

Production – Writing

Since I wasn’t the lead writer this time, I gave the writers creative freedom for the story plot and character appearances. I was very “hands-off” compared to my previous project.

That being said, the things to keep in mind for next time:

• Have an outline with important/required plot points.
• Check in more with the writing and writers.
• Specify the styles and conventions. And making sure everyone understands it. Although the script this time was short, in the long run, it’ll help with editing.

Production – Character Customization Assets

Again, I gave creative freedom to our CC artist. The only requirements that there be masculine, feminine, and androgynous CC assets.

The assets were finished quite early! I then took them and prepared them for colorizing.

Programming – Character Customization & House Decor

Programming for Sparkle☆Décor proved to be the most intimidating out of all the programming jobs I’ve done for any other jams.

First, I had to learn and understand the dense code that is Colorize Tools by Feniks (I can never give enough support to Fen for making this. Like seriously!) within the first week as I couldn’t dedicate any more time to it.

By end of week 1, a very basic CC was born!

While I had been making small progress on it, it wasn’t until the last week of March that the CC system was functional. Even then, there were still minor bugs here and there.

I won’t get too into the technical aspects but there was a lot of adjusting the art side for it to properly work with the programming side. Hoo boy.

After getting the hang of the CC system, the house decorating part wasn’t as intimidating. Originally, I wanted the items and rooms to be fully color customizable, but there wasn’t time.

Programming – Desktop System

On Day 2 of the story, you’ll notice it starts with what looks like a desktop screen. Which it is! A very limited version though.

My biggest hurdle was grouping together multiple screens under the same drag group. I was fighting it for days, and what was the solution? If-statements. The basics.

Always try the basics first. Lesson learned.

Other than that, the work to make the desktop interface customizable was fairly feasible. It was just a lot to do. Having to keep track of so many variables didn’t make it easier.

Project management

Tough. Very tough. This was only my 2^nd time leading a jam team, and it was 2-3 people larger than my last one. On top of little prior planning and IRL duties, I was a bit overwhelmed at how much there was to keep track of and do.

I was also the creative director and programmer. Woah!

But overall, I don’t mind doing it again (as of writing this, I am directing and leading a team for Blossom VN Jam!), but I should plan more before recruiting.

Another issue was using GitHub. I’m already familiar with it and using it with teams, but Cydewyn wasn’t (our script programmer). While things went well for the most part, there were lots of annoying issues. Like some changes not being pushed…

So the point? EVERYONE. LEARN. GIT.

Whether you’re a programmer or not, learn it!

Release

Due to some delays, we couldn’t finish everything. And then we had to do quick tests of the game. Luckily, many of the errors were typos.

Testing is important, but oh where is the time…

But hey, we did it! Our demo is released, and I’d say it’s working pretty well.

What did I learn?

If I’m going to have all these features, THEN PLAN. So much of the time was spent trying to learn new tools which took away some time in other features I wanted. But that’s also another thing when game development, never be afraid to bring down the scope knife.

Additionally, I should’ve had a better outline of the story and aesthetic of the game. Would’ve helped a lot with initial decision making.

Still, I consider this game out of my proudest yet. You can’t deny the amount of effort and love that went into this game. All within a month!

Anyways, thank you for reading and give a BIG thank you to the team behind Sparkle☆Décor as I can’t reiterate how much this would not have been possible without them. And thank you to every who has played and shared our game! 

Until my next project - Food Conversations: Lunch Lingo (For Blossom VN Jam!)!

Otoke