Heya! It's November 4th!

Already!?? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Welp. I'll be blunt with myself, this devtober
might have been 
possibly has been
without a doubt been a minor failure, for me. I say minor cause of what DID go right, but that doesn't mean I can turn a blind eye to what went wrong. 

That being said I'd like to yap about it for a bit.

So a little backstory: Devtober is a yearly october game jam where the objective is to make progress on an existing project or start one and get it on the road. It's not competitive in any way, with the only goal being to hopefully achieve your self set dev achievements. Hallohill started as a devtober project in 2021, then titled "The Castle on Hallohill". However, I never submitted it to the 2021 jam since I didn't have anything playable at the time. To the me back then it felt like I spent an entire month getting my foot off the ground when I had plans to be flying by the end. I didn't even create an itch page for the game until 2 years later in 2023, which is when my interest in the project resurgence. Long story short I picked up the project again this year around August and have been designing it since. I thought, "Hey! Why not join this years devtober and continue on Hallohill? It'd be like old times" (not really that old but ok). 

Now for the meat and potatoes. How did this devtober go for me? For Hallohill?

To measure some of my progress I will use a [Where I was] and [Where I am] approach. 

[Where I was]
- october 1st
- solo dev
- havent figured out the scope of the game
- testing menu code and unsure of aesthetic (graphic design) ideas. Main menu would have to be redone
- story unfinished, many main plot points undetermined
- no gameplay, 3D and many game design systems were not figured out
- not good at animating or setting up scenes in Blender
- 2 character models
- Conception stage going into design


[Where I am]
- november 4th
- dev team, created myriorama along with gaining voice acting talent
- scope of the game figured out
- Game design still unfinished but more refined. Created a design doc to help with organizing. Visual novel system finished
- story unfinished, some main plot points undetermined. All 3 acts decided on. 
- testing gameplay. Learning how to use Babylon 3D and creating mock Visual Novel scenes
- not good at animating in Blender, but found many resources and figured out video compositing 
- teaser video made
- 2 character models (with designs that have to be redone)
- Design stage going into... design?

That sums it up, a slow month. Progress has been made... heck I have a dev team now and things are moving along. The scope is being determined, with more efficient ways being decided on and cracking down on being overambitious.
I feel it could have been more. I feel this could have been the month WHEN all the design was completed and I moved into active development of scenes and levels etc. Is it just me? I could be rushing things. Fully aware that great things take time, and the fact that a very good game coming out eventually should be good enough to keep me going.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm realizing my 'pace'.
And boy is it a shocker.

On the bright side, it's always been fun to develop. And I'm looking forward to the day I wake up to the game's release.

Thank you for reading these inner thoughts of mine :3