Yeah, it's not a joke.

Well, it definitely started out as a joke. However, I'm 100% serious about delivering the best, story rich, plant dating visual novel of all time.  Thankfully, that's a pretty easy feat considering this is the only one that exists~!
please don't make one just to spite me

There certainly is going to be a lot of work to get this game finished, but in order to keep my spirits up I thought I'd share some of the things I've done already. This is a quick summary of my work over the last 3 months as solo dev with a full time job. There's a lot to cover, so buckle up.

If you want the answer to the title, feel free to scroll all the way down to the bottom.

CODE:

First things first, I'm writing this visual novel engine from scratch on top of SFML in C++. I consider myself a Unity developer, but I highly appreciate the minutia of flexibility that comes with C++. Check out this wibbly wobbly text!

Sure, that would have been a lot easier to do in Unity, but here I could hook it up to custom audio to make those beautiful beeps and boops sound just right.
(okay, I can do that in unity too)

There's still a lot to do, but for now I have a working textboxes, dialog, and support for picking choices and branching paths (of a currently inconsequential variety)

WRITING:

When writing for a visual novel, not only do you have to apply generals rules for writing good dialogue that I lack knowledge of, but you also have to write for the box itself. I find myself constantly playing and rewriting dialogue so it flows better in the textbox itself. Additionally, you can use the expressions from the art as well as the extra effects like the wibbly wobbly text above to give the characters extra... character?

Although I'm writing the story using a solid outline, the details become more and more fleshed out as I go and so do the characters. Often, an eureka moment in writing some character interaction means I have to go back and rewrite or add details to support that development earlier on in the story.

Currently, I've written 4 of 12 core scenes planned for the game, with a total of 800 lines of dialogue or about 40 minutes of playtime. Of those 4 scenes, I've only hooked up the sprites and expressions for 2 of them. I'd throw out a demo, but since I keep tinkering with the story as I write, I'll leave it alone until I'm happy and have given it a good few polish runs.

ART:

When it comes to visual novels, good writing can do a lot to conjure imagery within your mind. But I'm not a good writer! It's a very interesting push and pull of shaping your writing in a way to work with what art you have and balancing that with the story you want to show.

Originally, I was planning to make this Visual Novel with custom character art and background art from various sources. However, the more I wrote, the harder it was to find backgrounds that would visually be cohesive and work with my story the way I wanted to. So I eventually made the even harder decision to make my own backgrounds.

I'm no background artist but I was lucky to have remembered how to use 3 vanishing points in Krita to make realistic, highly consistent perspective.

Slightly deterred but no less desperate for background art, I got some line art and colored it in with some flat shades of my choice.

Taking from my knowledge of game rendering, I then added a gradient shading layer that somewhat simulates ambient lighting and ambient occlusion. (Shown above by itself above, but I did it on top of my shading)

For shadows, I created a Unity environment to mirror my background, and used it as reference to base my drawings. Once I drew all the lighting in, I added blurs to create a pleasant, nostalgic bloom effect.

Repeat the shadow step 3 times for different day time variants, add a bunch of tinting and extra detail layers, and you're good! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I'm definitely a bit worried about what will happen when I am forced to deal with trees and organic shapes.

SO, WHAT NEXT?:

For the holidays, I'll be taking a break for my mind and body and come back to crunch on this for the next few months of 2023. There's a lot to do before I think it'll be in a releasable state, but I'm looking forward to showing off more of the game as I go. Please add it to your collection if you'd like to follow along on this frankly ludicrous journey.

WHY PLANTS?:

Why not?
Yep, that's your answer. Thanks for reading!