First off the bat, since the last time I posted about my game I thought up a much better name. ‘Gentle People‘, a reference to the Scott MacKenzie lyric, was a bit opaque and it’s not like the game is particularly 60s-themed any how, despite nominally being a representation of that period. ‘Label Maker‘ is more dynamic and snappy, and crucially it’s also a pun. No-one can dislike a pun.
One of the things you don’t necessarily expect about game development is how slow it is – though you might guess from the curious emphasis on speed that all the various gamedev tools boast about. It often resembles nothing so much as attempting to build a ship in a bottle, with vast amounts of effort going into the placement of tiny bits of rigging and polish. Having sprinted all the way to having a 3D environment for the game to take place in, actually having things occur there is a long, slow process.
For example, in the last few weeks I have put multiple days work into two fairly trivial problems: one, having a band of four or five people walk to the elevator, disappear, then return, and two having a single person walk to the break room and back. The former required some way to know when a band was ‘off-stage’, so to speak, and the latter required being able to figure out where someone should go back to according to their role and the current state of the game. Neither was trivial to do!
As you can see towards the top, I’m currently implementing a feature where you manage a stable of songwriters in addition to bands, so that bands can cover each others songs and play standards – or be singer-songwriter setups who are deeply concerned with authenticity and all that. I also think there’s something inherently fun in giving the player some agency in picking the name of the song, even if it’s just from a limited list.
I’ve also been working through adding a bit of visual interest to the game: specifically, walking animations for the little people and instrument items for the relevant band members to carry. As well, I’ve made the floor of rooms where you can do something flash yellow when hovered, to nudge you into clicking into them.
All this new work has paused updates to the web build for some months. I’m almost ready to post a new release, but I need to go over to Itch at some point and replace all the assets that reference the old name. Not the first time I’ve had to do this either! The early prototypes for this were called ‘Culture Prototype‘ on Itch (to pair with ‘Swat Prototype’ for the narrative 3D game I didn’t make).
Previously: Devlog 1