Good day all.

Unsettling as it is to think about - We have hit the middle of this academic term! As discussed in our last Devlog, the course marks this occasion with a mid-term review meeting - where 2 tutors decide if our game is able to continue developing.

Before getting started on the log itself - I can proudly announce that Slime Café was Green Lit! This means, bar a few minor fixes, the project is cleared to go ahead as planned.

Anyway, enjoy the devlog!

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Sprint 3.2 - Devlog - October 26th to October 30th.

Progress:

Myself and Warren spent the week piecing together half of what we needed for the upcoming mid-term, a presentation! Needing to introduce our game to 2 new people and talk over: The elevator pitch, general aesthetic and character choices, gameplay functions, setting and world and lastly showcase work in progress content that won't make it into the prototype.

We haven't just been putting together this presentation - Both of us have also been practicing over and over again to talk through during the mid-term within a reasonable time frame. While a big time sink for the both of us, presenting our ideas clearly is a pretty major part of game development. While less professional obviously, these kinds of presentations are common industry practice when seeking publishers or speaking to shareholders. It was good practice to get into and an enjoyable process.

Kathryn and Sapphire have been expanding our NPC's once again, preparing them for a customer creation code to come in later prototypes as well as offering more in-progress material to showcase in our presentation. Customers can now have a range of different clothing and hairstyles, randomised onto a child, adult or elderly body archetype. 

We intend to expand these archetypes in the future, as well as adding more hair, clothes etc. - But for now they serve as a good baseline for customer creation. You can see he general templates above, and below the elderly template with a randomly assigned shirt.

Jemma has been expanding the game world's visual essence as well - Modelling more and more of the café to feature in an upcoming playtest build. Piecing together the fundamental art now will help us define the visual style of the café - Helping play testers see the games art style and help us refine it into something wonderful in the future. Playtesting is not simply for mechanics, gaining insight into art, narrative and more are all useful pieces of information you gain gain from a playtesting session!

Kim has been at work once again detailing the lives, histories and personalities of our interesting cast of characters. This week has been focused on Zeph - The cynical and seemingly reluctant Slime researcher who works in the back of the café. His exact purpose and motivation is unknown - just what is he up to back there...?

The rest of the characters are all still in development, and while it's going to be a little while till they are seen in a build - Be assured that there are plenty of interesting characters to come.

The whole team has been working hard to prepare for the mid-term meeting as well, ensuring we are ready to answer any and all questions the tutors might have for us.

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Problems:

While the mid-term review was a success and we made excellent progress towards it, the deadline did prove to become problematic as well. Not enough of the prototype was ready in time, leading to us only having a very short and simple version of our planned prototype to show the tutors. While sufficient to persuade them to give us a green light, it definitely caused some issues. Problems discovered in the way the code was set up acted as a blocker and caused quite a bit of work to be redone, forcing Jake to do less in order to have something functional to showcase.

In the Mid-term this issue was discussed, and we decided as a team that with only a single programmer - leaving Jake to do most of the in engine processes was going to lead to problems down the line. The team as a whole will be making a more active effort to participate in-engine and help ease some of that burden, as well as trying to be as realistic as possible on what we can achieve to prevent overpromising in the future.

Besides this, Kathryn and Myself have been busy dealing with work outside of university as well. Working on commissions and contracted work has been a mild blocker in some productivity, but overall we still managed to do what was needed for the mid-term.

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The Mid-Term meeting was a pleasant way to end the last sprint after a busy week preparing for it. Being greenlit is very reassuring as to the future of our project - and while we still have plenty of work to do, the future of slime café is looking bright!

That wraps up this week's Devlog anyway, we hope you've enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoy writing them.

Remember to stay in touch via Email, Twitter or itch.

As always, we hope everyone stays safe out there and has a pleasant week ahead.

Till next time ~

• Dan Baker: Producer, Supporting Writer and Scrum Master for Slime Crime