DEVLOG 1: Divine Omen C3 Progress

Things have been crazy on itchio! We got a sudden surge in visibility that put Divine Omen right on the front page and it was even #1 in some of the genre tags! The funniest part is I still have no clue how it happened. I guess itch just decided it was time for us to explode! The excitement has since died down and we’re averaging a very comfortable 40-50 views, which you’ll never catch me complaining about. I’m just glad the game was given a chance to reach a wider audience of people who really seem to be loving it! The outpouring of support couldn’t have come at a better time - I can’t express just how grateful I am. From the big surge, we’ve hit some crazy milestones, like:

• 3 more perfect reviews

• Nearly 1,000 browser plays/downloads

• We smashed the $50 sale goal on itchio!

• We went on to smash the $100 sale goal right after that!!!

• We hit my personal wishlist goal for the year in MAY!

I hope you guys are as proud as I am of just how far we’ve come. I may be a solo dev, but this is a group effort, after all! I want to extend a special thanks to everyone who helped make that possible. I mean it - this couldn’t have come at a better time. This past week has not been fun for me but this big surge has given me something to look forward to when I really needed it!

Now let’s dive deeper into what’s really going on behind the Divine Omen curtain (my desk in my house).

Steam post imageDo you guys like this little visual? I think I’m gonna do this from now on. This should give you a pretty solid idea about where we stand, but I’ll still be going into detail about what everything means down below:

WRITING

You’d think this would be at 100%. Nah, I’m crazy. Obviously I know what direction the story will take, but I like to leave myself just a little room to change things as I deem it necessary. Some great ideas come at the last minute! There’s also a lot of little moments to write in. For a big portion of Chapter 3, you actually take control of two protagonists - not just Avan. Each protagonist interacts with the world and its people differently, so there’s a lot of extra writing to be done. Don’t even worry, it’s cool.

CODE

There’s actually a ton of coding still left to do despite reaching 60% here…I can explain! Remember how I said you control two protagonists? Chapter 3 opens with a pretty massive exploration segment just like the one near the end of Chapter 2. Oh, you haven’t played it? Tsk tsk…go do that. Sale’s coming in June. Anyway, big exploration segment. It’s probably double the size of the one in Chapter 2 and I’m still adding on little bits every now and then. All that plus having two unique protagonists? That’s a lot of code. But hey, it’s done!

See? Clearly I’m hard at work here.

SOUNDS/SFX

I always do the SFX last, so it’s not a surprise this is as low as it is. I do, however, have a pretty impressive library of sounds built up and once it’s time, it’ll take no time to add it all in. Music, however…of course, that couldn’t be easy. My DAW of choice shut down (like…permanently inaccessible), so in order to create more tracks, not only will I have to learn a whole new software, I’ll also have to recreate the existing tracks in it for the sake of continuity…two things I’m really not interested in dealing with. Those two tasks are also made more difficult by the fact that I don’t know the first thing about music…genuinely. I don’t know what I’m doing.

Despite being clueless, I think I’ve managed to make a pretty nice soundtrack. I wish I had more than 8 tracks, but…maybe that’s enough. It’s not like the music is the main draw. I dunno. What do we think?

PLACEHOLDER ART

My process is kinda funky. I make placeholders for everything just to get an overall idea of how this story is actually being told. Sometimes I like what I see, other times I hate it. Placeholder art is a great way to build up an idea without investing 20 hours into rendering it. It also gives me a good opportunity to boost my skills a little more before it’s time to render for realsies. Win-win!

See those mysterious ghostly figures? I actually have an interesting plan for those…something about letting you guys work with me to design your very own NPCs to put there in exchange for MONEY! Check out this inactive Kickstarter page and tell me what you think. I haven’t really decided just yet if this is a route worth taking, but we’ll see what the future holds. You can leave feedback on the page itself, even. I’ve never done this before so any feedback is always appreciated.

FINAL ART

Obviously the final art comes last, so this stat’s pretty low. That 15% accounts for the artwork I’ve been able to reuse so far and honestly…hopefully it’ll rise for that same reason! Reusing things is very helpful! It gives me more time and energy to focus on making the new stuff even better than the last. We like that!

BONUS STUFF

Stats pulled right from lint, baby! Let’s go! The game contains 9,928 dialogue blocks, containing 91,465 words and 489,191 characters, for an average of 9.2 words and 49 characters per block. The game contains 191 menus, 1,453 images, and 291 screens.

For reference, Chapter 1 had around 41k words and Chapter 2 had 73k. Upon completion, I expect Chapter 3 to have something like 120k words, so…we’re getting warmer!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on the game’s online presence and decided to distance myself from the project a little bit…meaning maybe my identity should be more “game developer” and less “divine omen dev only and literally nothing else”…cause I mean, I do other stuff! With that said, here are my new carrds. The Divine Omen page even has a whole press kit!

• Divine Omen

• Ruby Ring

• Let me reiterate that a dormant Kickstarter page now exists just waiting to be awoken from her slumber.

• I also have a Keymailer …if that’s relevant to anyone…

• Oh, and I put the demo up on Game Jolt. That was kinda a waste of my time. It wouldn’t even let me put the full game. I tried TWICE! I emailed SUPPORT! Don’t they know I’m famed game developer K, creator of hit indie visual novel Divine Omen available on Steam, itchio, and now Game Jolt???

• I have some dumb social media stuff planned too - some things I hope will get a few more eyes on the game. I’ve been neglecting it for a little while but hey, I’ve been busy!

Again, thanks for the big surge in support! I hope this big juicy devlog serves as repayment! Stay tuned for my next one (more annoying rambling) coming innnnnnn….I dunno, probably a month from now? I’ll update you then!