Devlog #5 - Flow Sandwich

Week 8 - 19.09.2018

Initially, I was hoping to finish up working on the models and adding little details into the middle section of the game. But, after discussing with my team mate and mentor, we decided that we wanted to work on the very start of the game and the very end of the game to help us understand the flow better. This also helped with getting more into the dialogue and the narrative of the game which would make playtesting make more sense without needing to explain before people started playing.

This week, I worked on the UI graphics for the 'prologue' and 'epilogue' of the game as well as the dialogue for those parts. I also added a bit more dialogue when the date ends to have it flow with the epilogue. With this new graphic for the start and end, I'm going to have to change the phone's graphics to fit with the newer one (I keep wanting to change it) but it won't be something I'd do now as there are other things I need to do. We also came up with a new name "Dout" which means to extinguish or put out a fire because we wanted something that was kinda similar to "Tinder" but weaker and that seemed very relevant. It also sounds liked "doubt" which is what the character feels about her date. BUT now that I keep looking at it, I keep thinking of gout so now the name kinda  grosses me out. I'll ask people what they think of it, and talk it over with my teammate and mentor and see what they say. Maybe it'll change, maybe it'll stay the same!!!!

This was what I came up with for the starting screen where you press the heart to start. My teammate came up with the idea that we could swipe right to start which is a super cool idea but after googling dating app UI's I noticed a lot of them had the heart and X buttons and I decided it would probably be better to have that so there'd also be an actual exit button too. [ALSO you would never expect a guy with a cute puppy to be a complete jerk. >:-((( ]

For the dialogue, there are two different endings in the epilogue. They haven't really been defined yet but eventually, we will have clear paths which will lead you to specific endings based on what you pick in the game.

I also put in the posed male character model into the scene for now just so it looks better (?) although, I realise that he is reaaaally big and not proportionately correct so I have to fix it up later on. But it does look more put together now compared to the original model I had. 

I feel like the game is starting to come together bit by bit and even though this is still only a fraction of what the entire game was initially supposed to be, it's a really good start and I'm super stoked to see where we can take it from here!! I think I'm going to do another round of playtesting some time soon because playtesting this week from home was really bad for me and I felt like I didn't get anything from it at all. 

I think that's all for now. I'm having more trouble coming up with titles for these devlogs and Flow Sandwich was the only one I could think of. It's a sandwich cause the game is sandwiched between your conversations with the date on the dating app... right???????? And it flows so it's a flow sandwich. Anyway, that's all for this week!! 

Thanks for reading!! :-)

- Jo