The Pink Room - Devlog 1

Hello, hello!

Well, this is my first ever devlog, so I'm not actually too sure about how to write it and what to put in it...

I briefly considered making videos, since I like watching other people's devlogs, but... That sounded too scary and stressful for me. Maybe one day. For now though, I'll try just writing them down here on itch. Maybe that'll teach me how to make them and get in the habit of sharing progress with the world.

Anyway...
The Pink Room! I'm not really someone that makes vent art much (actually, I can't think of a single time I've ever done that... Maybe in middle school?), but this is most definitely what this game is: a game about a lot of frustration in my journey to improve my mental health. Still, I don't want it to be heavy or depressing, so I'll try to tone things down and keep it fun and lighthearted despite the subject matter.

I also really want to learn to make various types of games using RenPy, not just visual novels. I really like how simple the engine is. I tend to gravitate towards simple programs for everything (been using Paint Tool SAI for art for over a decade) for some reason.
This will be my first attempt at a point-and-click puzzle game, and I'm excited about all the future possibilities learning something like this will create (I have so many ideas but so little knowledge to actually implement them...). 
I'm also not all that interested in becoming a Real Programmer™ or anything. I'll always think of myself as a digital artist first, anything else is just helping me make the things I want.

Okay. Onto something a bit more interesting!

Here are some images from the very first stages of the game:

Behold: The Pink Room!
Or a random royalty free image I found that I decided to slap into Renpy lol. I filled it with other random royalty free images with the intention of making the whole game like this... I was going to focus on  making the puzzles and getting them to work first, then going back and making all the art myself.
Fortunately, I quickly discovered that this would be wildly inefficient. I think it was a video by Jonas Tyroller that convinced me to go back and make the art from the beginning. He used a really good analogy, saying that games should be built "one story at a time",  so that even if you're not able to finish building all the stories, you'd still have a functional building (or a game to share).

Making it like this also has the upside of being overall faster! Plus, knowing how common it is for developers/artists to abandon their projects at some point, this is really solid advice that can prepare you in case that happens.
I doubt that's how actual buildings are made but... it gets the point across well, so who cares!

With this new plan, I decided to think of all the puzzles first (a lot more fun than I expected!), so I could make the necessary art as I went. Now I knew what the player would interact with, and where everything would go.

I know it sounds insane, but I genuinely thought of making all the art for this game in MS Paint. I very quickly abandoned the idea, in favor of common sense and self preservation 👍
I decided to go for a simple, cutesy style, so I looked up some Sanrio stuff for inspiration. It ended up being really useful, especially for the color palette. As you can see, originally I wasn't going to stray away from the color pink much. I'm glad I ended up deciding against it, though, it's a lot more interesting now.

Here are some flooring options I made for the Pink Room. I was really undecided, so I ended up asking a bunch of people for their opinions... Pretty sure I'll be going with the yellow-pink checkered tiles.

So far I've done about.. 3 puzzles? (it's hard to define when one starts and one ends) and I'm happy to say I haven't encoutered any major problems yet. Lemma Soft Formus is such a huge help whenever I need to look up anything code related. If I got stuck I usually found my answer there.
That said, I don't expect my code to be the most clean or efficient by the end of this... I'm learning a lot, but I don't really know what I'm doing at the end of the day lol. As long as it works I'm happy, though!

I think that's a good place to end this devlog.

If anyone at all read this, hey!! Thanks!! I don't really expect to have readers so I genuinely appreciate it!

See you in the next one!

- dicortesia