It's official! The game is live! - please let me know if you encounter any problems, or issues. I'll do my best to fix them as soon as I can!

Afterwards

I don't want to refer to it as a post mortem. Rather... peractis, or even ad astra per aspera. Because this isn't a death, but rather just the continuation of a journey.

Okay, hella cheesy. But I'm AnonymousCheese for a reason. 

Most of this project went right. Very little went catastrophically wrong. In fact - I don't think any of it went so wrong I wanted to quit, or yeet myself into the Mariana's Trench.

What Went Right?

• Writing

The script for AOMT was completed within the first 3-4 days of the jam. I was going to write here that I wrote it like a short story, but... it... well it's a visual novel, so that would make sense to write it that way, wouldn't it?

This was the easiest part of the development. I had an idea for a game where the voiceless main character followed around their male partner, and originally, AOMT was going to be a FREE 3D game made with pre-made assets (mostly because it was a small idea and I didn't know if I wanted to put much more time into it than throwing it together with assets and their appropriate licenses as a proof of concept kind of thing). When I found the Yaoi Game Jam, I figured that it would be the perfect medium to use this idea with, even if I didn't get to showcase that I could build a 3D game just yet.

So I plucked this idea off my idea shelf, officially wrote its story, and got to work. 

• Music/Ambience/Effects

The music for this game is not Hans Zimmer quality. I'm no Bach. But it's probably the best music work I've ever done in 10+ years of playing around with music programs and not doing anything serious with it. I'm actually jealous of this game having better music than the actual dating sim game I'm creating, Rainbow Heartbeats, so you can bet your bottom I'm going back to fix that right away for RH. 

There are songs, ranging in lengths from about 20 seconds to about 2 minutes+ for each section of the game. Only one song repeats, and that's the song for the "flashback" areas. And really, rather than repeating, it's really just the two instruments in the song, the piano and the guitar, split up and the combined for the final memory. The soundtrack for the game includes the full versions for each song, however for the actual game, the songs were intentionally divided into parts so that you didn't get the full song all at once on repeat. 

My favorite songs are the ocean and forest area songs.

Most effects were pulled from a creative commons library. Ones I couldn't find, I made. I created the rustling effect in the forest, the rock sounds for the rock puzzle, the paper sounds for the forest section, the "blowing in your ear" sound in the mountain region, the sounds for Iiva (of which she makes 2 of in game, but I made 4), the bird screeches in the sky section, all uahnik sounds both baby and adult, the treasure master roars and hiss were created by myself, and the squid cries in the ocean section.

• Art

The art was completely done by myself. Background art and sprite art was all completed in stages. I did concept art before I settled on what I liked and then filled in the rest from there. Background art was completed before sprites were done. Some of the location arts are based off real locations. For instance, I based the sky-deck in the later sections of the game off of the Calgary Tower in Alberta, Canada.

The sprites were not based off anything particular. One of Danny's lines does give away that I did base the uahniks off of a pig/guinea pig combination. When I sketched the baby uahnik I couldn't help but think that it was just delightfully ugly. Like, she's not kitten cute, but just cute enough where you're thinking to yourself that she's adorably ugly hahaha. Maybe people will think she's adorable without thinking she's also simultaneously about as cute as a naked mole-rat. 

The Lizardian (yes, that's the official name for him) in the forest section is based off a leopard gecko. I'm a fancier of reptiles and have a few of my own and leopard geckos were my first step into reptiles when I was young. Now, leopard geckos are never green, but also, lizard-people don't exist, so let me have my cake and eat it too please.

The mermaid is a mermaid. :D

The birds in the sky area of the game were meant to be based off the Rito from Legend of Zelda. Just with less clothes. Ekweena is a shoebill, and her mate Iiva is meant to be a breed of pigeon. I would say a German owl, but German owls' rarely have Iiva's coloring. I love the short beak and the head feathers that German owl pigeons possess.

The Voidian named Two in the final stretch of your vacation with Danny wasn't based off anything particular. I just like the idea of having a humanoid creature with eyes all over him. I wanted him to be unsettling to appeal to my need for cryptid things, but harmless because the boys were on their last destination.

• Programming

Most of the programming for AOMT was handled by the Unity asset, Fungus, but not all of it could be. For instance, last I checked, Fungus can't program a puzzle, or a pause menu, or "quit game" button.

Aside from my custom put splash screen for my studio name, the entire game is a single Unity scene (so basically 1 level) with 1 Fungus flowchart. This poses a problem for certain functionality, but I didn't worry about that for this project since it was just a game jam project.

Fungus handled fading the UI for background images, fading music, dialogue and story options, and handled the variables as well for whether or not you'd taken specific items, including giving you special dialogue if it wasn't your first item you've taken. 

Not too much was difficult in this section.

What Went Wrong?

• Music/Ambience/Effects

 I struggled with the "mountain" and "ocean" songs, because I didn't want them to sound ominous, or too haunting or foreboding or anything like that. I'm still not completely happy with how the mountain song sounds until it get's to the later stages in that area.

I also had no way of smoothly fading in the next progression of a song because the sections were not all the same lengths. In some games, like Spyro for instance, they layer the music tracks for various area's, so you get to hear different versions of them depending on where you are. It's the same song, but it's been changed based on the circumstance, like being in a hub area and pausing the game, the same song plays in the pause menu, but it's a more echo-ey version of it. Or you go underwater and it's the same song but it's more muted and "underwatery" sounding haha. This is achieved by just having all the music tracks playing simultaneously, but you only hear the main version of it until you do or go to one of these places, and then they switch the songs, but you don't notice it because the transition is smooth and because the songs are all playing at the same time and are the same tempo/length.

The same could not be accomplished with this project. That's a much more advanced music concept that I'll save for one of my other projects, but I do lament I didn't take the time to accomplish it with this project.

• Art

The art in this game is not the most mind-blowing, time consuming piece of beauty ever. The sprites are basic, mostly flat colors with very little definition and shadows. Danny's hair looks weird in some of his sprites and I hate it but didn't want to go back to fix it. Looking at some of the other projects submitted for SuNoFes and Yaoi Game Jam, there is a lot better art out there. 

But I like my art. Some of it was super basic for this project, and not even my best work, but I do like what I've done in such a short amount of time.

• Programming

The resolution issues and the rock-puzzle were my greatest challenges creating this, but doing the research and taking the time to try and troubleshoot it myself has given me some valuable experience.

While resolution issues isn't exactly programming in the sense of it being coding for the game, it was important to get the resolution settings working right for players. I struggled with this right up until the final build, and still think I have issues with it. The game kept changing resolution every time I opened the options menu because the menu was always set to inactive, and the script was set to change it based on your system settings. So I had to set it to a game object that was always active so that it wouldn't keep adjusting it everytime the options menu was opened.

The rock puzzle in the forest area consisted of a number-based combination puzzle. You need to press the rocks in the correct order to move forward. I needed the script to store a "correct code", and then string along a number attached to each rock until you had 9 numbers, and then the code needed to check that string of numbers to the "correct code". If they matched, you won. If they didn't, the dialogue would say something cheeky and you had to try again until you got it.

Now, eventually I got this working, but the code was inefficient. There's a different script attached to each rock (so 9 individual scripts) that store that rock's number. Then, the main puzzle script is supposed to steal the number from each individual rock's script on a "onClick" listener and string them together.

Looking at how minimal some similar codes are when I did my research to try and find a solution to this (before I found the solution of making 9 other script files to attach to 9 of the rock graphics), this could be done much more efficiently. But I've tested the puzzle in and out and it's airtight with how I have it. So I'm not going to sweat the small stuff.

I'm sure you can still find my unanswered question on the Unity forums, because there was no easy solution for this that wasn't attached to 100 other things that I didn't need for this puzzle.

What I learned?
A lot. There's a lot of experience I can take from researching for this project that I can apply to future and current projects. Like for instance, the main menu issue. If I want people to be able to go to the main menu at will whenever they want, I can't have it all in the same scene for most projects because there are too many variables to consider. For Rainbow Heartbeats, I'll have to put the main menu in a separate scene and make sure that  the variables persist across the Fungus Flowcharts.

Resolution tweaking is another thing I'll be fixing right away with Rainbow Heartbeats as well, because that's not optimized to work with the best system either.

I did learn that applying myself when it's required is easier than I expected it to be. I've been lugging along with Rainbow Heartbeats, with 6 characters and only a handful of locations for almost a full year now, and I should really get on finishing everything else so I can move on to more ambitious projects.

I also learned that I can freaking do this and don't need validation from anything or anyone other than myself. I'm making games for myself, to apply myself, to prove to myself that I can do the things with all the weird, niche skills that I have, and that is a good portion of what's important to me throughout this process. For years, I've had all these different skills that, at face value, all belong to the same general area, but could never really be used in 1 place. But as an indie developer, I'm using the full extent of my skill set. Programming/coding. Music engineering, sound design. Voice acting. Art (and 3D modeling as well). I have decent skills in most of these area's, but using them all for one project is almost impossible, so I never get the full flex of every single thing I am able to do with any job or career.

Until indie developing. People may hate AOMT. People may never play any of my games, but I really get to practice, and work on every single unique skill I have in this area, and that is just nifty and is everything I could hope for. It's also a lot of work, but if you do what I like, then it never feels like work.

So! Final thoughts are this - AOMT was great. I enjoyed creating it despite some minor issues that I solved quite quickly all things considered. This was my first game jam, and likely won't be my last, however I'll be putting a much heavier focus on my upcoming projects so I can really get moving on them.

If you liked All of My Tomorrows and enjoy visual novels/wholesome dating simulators, please check out my other project Rainbow Heartbeats, and consider supporting me with a donation, or by following any projects you think look interesting! I won't be showcasing the next project in the studio's line up until RH get's closer to completion, but you can find a sneak peak of it on Opalizard's main page. If you like open world survival games, then you'll probably like our next game...

Lastly, thanks to the jam hosters for SuNoFes and Yaoi Game Jam 2021, and good luck to all other collaborator's, studios, groups, soloists, and all other walks of life who also submitted their projects or entered the jams! I hope you all continue to seek and achieve what you're looking for in this indie world!

Please check out the video included in this Ad astra per aspera as it is a video devlog for the entirety of my creating of AOMT.

Thank you!!