Version 2 is Done!!!!!!

Version 2 is finally done! Like a week after the initial deadlines I set...

Here are spoilers for Version 1 and 2 of Changing World, Changing Me! If you have played neither, I recommend playing Version 2 only! Version 1 doesn't share many similarities to Version 2 anymore and was also my first fully developed game in RPGmaker MV. As a result, it's a little shit haha.

To start, Version 2's development ballooned a lot more than I initially intended! The main reasons were 1) I added the dream sequences to the story + additional Q and C scenes and 2) the art took a LOT of time. 

In Version 1, I actually wanted to include dream sequences and more QC scenes. In Ver 2, I went a little crazy making those scenes haha. The art more than anything took the most time!

Unlike Version 1 where I learned more programming, in Version 2 I really learned how to implement character art and backgrounds properly. For example, you can see in the images above that the art for the sidescroller section or the Fireworks dream is actually just a single event an the bottom of the screen. Players are actually interacting with a group of events that span 1 stall. That meant a lot of copy and pasting and re-copy and pasting if I ever had to make edits to that stall haha. All the sidescroller sections work similarly and even the giant sunflower  in the first section of the game is just a singular event with a very large character png.

A couple of the dream  scenes are also videos! The nightmare where C is sinking into the sea is one example. Since I have video editing experience, these were quick to make. That Dreamsea video is a little janky though since I didn't understand anchor points until the end.

And the koi and lily pad image above is because they aren't fully seeable in the game so I wanted to show them off here.

The SFX wasn't all that difficult. I reused some old sounds I made and also pulled sounds from videos I took preparing for this project! The sound of birds tweeting and the ocean waves are a couple examples.  These SFX took less than a day.

As for the BGM, I wanted to mess around with virtual instruments. To do that, I looked up and tried out FL Studio for a bit. It was surprisingly easy poking around the program without looking up documentation. I did do that a little later though!

Before opening the program, I did put some thought into what kind of BGM I wanted. To make it easier on me, I thought I would make a base of nature/natural music with separate 30-second C and Q themes on top. I wanted something that would be easy to loop without needing to know how to end a music loop haha. C's theme would be made of drums and Q's theme would be the bass guitar. They just seemed like easy, lowkey instruments to use especially after I got a hang of how they're used from watching cover videos on Youtube.

I gave myself a day to fret over the BGM but that night I had a stress dream that something felt missing. So the next day I added the 'moodmaker' - a little bit of piano that shows up in some QC scenes. Compared to the previous QC BGM, I thought the moodmaker gave the new version a lighter, more hopeful feel. Q's theme has an especially dour part after all.

On a different note, there are some bugs in the game but I'm pretty sure they're just visuals. In the Firefly section where Q and C are chatting while looking at the stars, the 'twinkling' loops gets a little messed up. It's because the events that run the twinkle loop and also change Q and C's poses use the same command. Q and C look fine but the stars get all clumpy... in the end, the bugs are just visual ones that I didn't want to try and keep fixing.

If there is anything I wished I could have added, it was probably the footstep sounds. Ultimately, I decided to drop those because I was just plain tired by the end of these 2 and a half months. I can't believe I thought I could finish this all in one!

I don't plan to release any new games in the next 2 months. The next project is going to take me a lot more time to plan out and pan out. So until then, thanks for playing Changing World, Changing Me Ver 2 and thanks for reading this devlog!

Oh yeah, did you notice C and Q have their own character summaries in their statuses? And that you can collect and read about different items you pick up in the game! I didn't mess with the equipment though. Oh and there are two variations in the CGs you get  in the first two QC scenes depending on whether you purchased the item available on those maps. That's the only effect though!