July Development Log

Hy everyone !

Every month, i'm sharing with you the advancement on my game Ellsydia, a small medieval City builder. I'm trying to show you what a solo gamedev can make during working days and describe you all creative steps before to have a finished and shipped game.

I detail every working week with the total amount of time I spent at work, a quick view of my workload, fatigue level, motivation, and adherence to deadlines. I represent it with this scale :

Good 🟢 🟡 🟠 🔴 Bad

🗓️ Week 1 (29 June-3 July)

🕙 Worktime: 30 h 45

Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss

• Posts on Bluesky, X, Threads, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

• Develog updates

🎨 Art

• Creation of scenery links when using zoom controls

🚧 Development : Demo

• Zoom controls fixes

• Parallax optimisation

• Several bug fixes

💼 Other

• Administrative tasks 🥱

Weekly review

This first week of July was dedicated to fixing zoom controls and improving the parallax system. Before these modifications, scenery elements were offset in a chaotic way with a disgraceful grey background.

I took the opportunity to integrate two new layers into the game's parallax: one for the foreground, used to harmoniously link the vegetation, and another for the background, with the same goal but for the sky this time.

🗓️ Week 2 (6-10 July)

🕙 Worktime: 37 h 00 Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss

• Posts on Bluesky, X, Threads, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

• Devlog updates

🎨 Art

• Creation of light effects masks

🚧 Development : Demo

• Lighting system integration

• Several bug fixes

💼 Other

• Administrative tasks 🥱

Weekly review

This week, I worked on the game lighting. I wanted warm and cozy lights during night phases. I opened Krita to create all light "cookies" (grayscale masks used to simulate advanced lighting effects). All building windows now have their own dedicated light mask. Once all the "cookies" were done, I integrated everything into the Godot engine.

I placed all the images one by one and retrieved all mask coordinates to handle them directly within the building selection system. It was a long, tedious, and fastidious job, but I'm very satisfied with the final result!

🗓️ Week 3 (13-17 July)

🕙 Worktime: 33 h 15 Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss

• Posts on Bluesky, X, Threads, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

• Develog updates

🎨 Art

• Creation of missing light effects masks

🚧 Development : Demo

• Integration of missing lighting system elements

• Villager spawn distribution during runs

• Code optimisation

• Several bug fixes

Weekly review

I started this week by integrating the remaining light elements I had forgotten last week! 😅 After that, I fixed several bugs and improved many features to simplify things. One of the improved features is the distribution of villager spawning during "Run" phases.

Until now, all villagers spawned in the village at the beginning of a "Run", leaving it as a wasteland until the end of the phase. Now, inhabitant activities are distributed throughout the entire day (or night) in a more balanced way!

🗓️ Week 4 (20-24 July)

🕙 Worktime: 30 h 30 Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Social Media

• Consulting, replying, discussions

• Posts on Bluesky, X, Threads, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

• Updating the development journal

🎼 Music

• Software installation and setup

• Musical inspiration research

🚧 Development

• Distribution of villagers during runs

• Adding comments and ambient/flavor text

• Fixing various bugs

Weekly review

During this work week, I finished the improvements I had started last week on villager spawn distribution. After that, I added a lot of text used for various interactions with villagers.

There are many variations of comments and feedback that characters can give to players to help them improve their shop management. I also added several variations of flavor text that is emitted when players click on villagers.

After a welcomed and well-deserved full day off, I finished my week with musical inspiration research. Indeed, I will start a new development phase that I have mastered less, but that I can't wait to work on: music composition.

🗓️ Week 5 (27-31 July)

🕙 Worktime: 39 h 00 Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Social Media

• Consulting, replying, discussions

• Posts on Bluesky, X, Threads, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

• Updating the development journal

🎼 Music

• Musical research

• Drafts for the title screen music

• Drafts for the Village Mission 1 music

💼 Other

• Administrative tasks 🥱

Weekly review

This last work week was entirely dedicated to the game's music production. The main goal was to create the title screen music and a gameplay theme. The gameplay theme will be split into two variations of the same track: one for the day phase, which is more dynamic, and another for the night phase, which is calmer and more subtle.

After my research, and once the installation and setup of the software I'll use for music composition were complete, I started some rough drafts. And as I mentioned before, this isn't the discipline where I'm most comfortable; it's easy to see... or rather, hear it! 😂

📈 July review

Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

This July flew by really, really (too?) fast. I'm genuinely happy to have managed to maintain an average of 33-hour workdays.

The work on the demo is coming to an end, once the music is finished and integrated, I'll finally be able to launch the playtest session I've postponed far too often. And I admit, I'm dreading this step enormously. I'm eager to finally get the game tested and gather precious feedback from players, but at the same time, I'm anxious for the very same reasons 😅😰😱

As usual, here's a quick update on the wishlists, which continue to steadily grow with a small increase of 10 additions, bringing the total to 137 wishlists. That's good news, especially since there was only 1 removal.

Thank you all so much for your support! ❤️

I'm now going to get back to work on the final parts of the Ellsydia demo, but I'll see you next month for a new devlog!

View on Steam

A quick reminder to add Ellsydia to your wishlist if you haven't already. Thank you sincerely for your help and support! 🥰

Thank you for reading,

David ✨