Hi guys, CervinePrince here~ and I'm back with a dev log to talk about my experiences of the good and the bad that happened during Marigold's development! 

Marigold had a lot of firsts for me, so I'll begin with the most important part: The inspiration for Marigold came when I was talking to supercircuit (chronomuxed) during yaoijam 2019. I've always wanted to make a sci-fi story, but I was often lost on what to do and how to begin.

That was when supercircuit gave me some pointers and I took a leap of faith.

Marigold and its branching endings was conceptualised... maybe within an hour. It was quick and rough, but workable! 

During the conceptualising stage I was also eyeing to join Bara Jam 2019. I wanted to try something new and Bara Jam offered me the unique chance to work with a much older character as a protagonist (and I got to interact with developers who are into bara games).

These decisions helped shape many things for the game and also gave interesting obstacles.

Some notable things are:

• Giving the "blank" character a "past" on short notice
• Setting the atmosphere of the game
• How will the plot be carried when there are no external forces to push
• How will a tired older protagonist react/perceive the situation
• I really don't know how to draw machines and spaceships

I tackled the issues bit-by-bit and explored some things that I wouldn't have been able to do with my other ideas like:

• Rename-able character
• Letting players choose bits of the protagonist's past and decisions
• Letting players determine if protagonist is in a relationship or not (and to an extent, the orientation of protag's SO)

At this point I was confident with the direction I was going in so far. I have this little idea that I wanted to try, and it's also out of my comfort zone. Things were pretty straight-forward during development when Bara jam was ongoing.

Except, I didn't realise my biggest flaw until I got my first low rating after Marigold 0.5's first release: My Dialogues.

It bothered me "Why". I wanted to know what I could improve on to make Marigold better. There were many thoughts going through my mind on what could be wrong and the strain of transitioning into my new job and responsibilities.

Eventually I suspected my script... It was that moment I realised my dialogues were riddled with information dumps and a lot of redundancies.

With that realisation, I did what I thought anyone would do. I went on a break and played games all day.

I made plans to rewrite the dialogues in Marigold, but went on with my break so I could see my mistakes better. From that point, I acknowledge that Marigold is entirely driven by dialogues and it sparked me to go on a wild goose chase looking for advice on how to improve dialogues. (Eventually, I did find good advice that suited me and got burned by the guy's sass in the process.) 

Around that time I was approached by Fable, who offered to proofread Marigold which was super nice of them to! It was a fun change of pace since I usually approach my best friend to go through my plot (kind of like an editor).  Fable pointed out a lot of things like what could be better or clearer and slowly but surely Marigold's script started to look and feel better. 

Yet I got stumped again. This time there were issues with the plot; it felt lacking somehow even though the dialogues were now fine.

I solved it by developing a rough 2nd plot to help with Marigold's plot. It was crazy, yet it somehow helped me. The 2nd plot had an impact on the plot and new artworks done for Marigold. (example: Who the leviathans are and their origins is more developed.)

The biggest change to Marigold was where the protagonist is now lost in. It pushed the atmosphere to become more somber compared to the vibrant colors of nebulas in 0.5. (Comparison photo below)

Once the script was done, it was time to remake most of the artworks. At first things were okay until I notice I was struggling with balancing work and developing Marigold. I was only able to draw at Friday nights and weekends which was too slow for me... I needed to find another way. (I am not known for my patience in game dev haha.)

The decision to getting the ipad + pencil did not come lightly.

I talked to people online and offline and went to try Procreate in Apple store.  It took me awhile before I decided to go for the ipad + pencil and transition from my drawing tablet & Photoshop  to Procreate. In the end, I'm glad I got procreate. It is a beautiful, lightweight tool and I feel like procreate opened some possibilities for me to test out other ways to color.

The moment I got comfortable with Procreate I jumped back into production for Marigold. Pretty much I had stoped playing games and I just drew artworks whenever I had free time and at night I coded in the new script and art by the bulk (when I finished a set of artworks). 

As I was nearing the end with Marigold's artworks, one of the things I wanted to do was to have a better UI and dreamed to have a gallery page. 

Even though I was intimidated by Renpy's GUI codes, I asked around for good starting point in Bara Jam's discord server. I started with just cleaning up Renpy's default UI, and nudging things around a bit until it looks sleeker. I thought the slow exposure to the UI's coding would slowly help me understand it a bit better.  I also reached out to bob (from barajam discord) for help in coding a gallery page. His help made the gallery page feel less intimidating to make!

And that's a wrap up for what happened.

There's been many ups and downs during development, and while I still struggle with this, taking breaks is definitely important and the risk or experience of burn-out isn't a good feeling. Although the impact of burning out on my art and writing was unfortunate; I still learned something valuable from it. 

Thanks for reading!