Hello again for my second-ever postmortem, this time about Moments! Solchet but in high school... the prequel story...

Thinking about when I released Moments, I'm really glad - and surprised - by how well it's doing! Thank you for the currently 250+ downloads and also to those who donated! Sol and Chet are very dear to my heart and their story has been rattling in my brain for a long time.

Writing

Moments is a story that's been in my head for a year now. I've written oneshots about them, then tried a novel and even an unfinished Nanoreno project. Being able to put everything into one game that I can point to and say "Yes, this is it. This is the definitive Solchet high school story" is super nice.

But it sure wasn't easy!

Because I had so many snippets across so many files, combining everything was actually more work than writing from scratch. My original idea was to structure the game as non-linear standalone scenes, essentially "moments." Needless to say... that didn't happen. I ended up with a lot of drafts and a lot of rewrites. 

After Moments was released, I went through them and honestly? Some parts are good. 

• In my character notes, I had "Sol: suburban depression. Being the one kid sitting alone at summer camp. Chet: suburban annoyance. The kid who tries to be funny on the first day of school and spends the rest of it sulking because he wasn’t."
• There was a Seven Minutes in Heaven scene! A downtown date where a vigilante appeared halfway! A sleepover! Romeo and Julichet! My homework because I did it in the same file! There were a lot of things.
• "S "I'm not drinking another spoonful of this soup!" He puts his spoon down and stares into the soup."

UI

The theme was "school but as you remember it ten years later" and I think it went pretty well. The lined paper was a cute touch...

Something interesting I tried during development was NVL style screens: scenes with text and illustrations, like a book. I even made a prototype before realizing the code was going to take a lot of work. Renpy has only one format for NVL screens and I wanted three different layouts. 

Made it work but as it turned out, I didn't even need these layouts because the narration wasn't heavy in the end.

(But if anyone does want to know how I did them, feel free to reach out! It'd just get too technical and rambly here.)

Art

I like the sprites! They're cute! That's all I have to say!

(I wrote about my art process in Mechet's postmortem and did the same thing here. Have some concept art!)

Programming

I split the face into three parts - the eyes, brows, and mouth - to stitch expressions together using layeredimage. Halfway in, I realized the time saved drawing was probably doubled in code. Changing the face line by line, each part individually, was a lot... They did turn out very dynamic in the end though! 

Speaking of dynamic, this was the first time I tried ATL, or Animation and Transformation Language. It's basically code that will make things move, which I used to make the sprites bounce and walk. I feel like it added a lot more immersion into the game. 

Music

I'm happy with what I chose. It feels like with each project, I think more about the music so my sense gets better. 

All in all...

Thanks for making it to the end! Once again, I write a lot. 

As for what I'm planning next... I told myself I'd take a break after Moments but then I got hit with ideas so! Solchet 10 years later! Please look forward to it!

And if you want to see gamedev updates, along with art and writing, I'm on Twitter!