Day 4: Bargaining

Over the halfway line now! I have no idea how people can complete things in 48-hour Ludum Dares; even at this point I know I'm going to be wishing for an extra day on Sunday evening (I suspect this is a universal truth for all game jams, regardless of duration).

I spent about half my time today on getting the music track fleshed out; I already had some chords in mind for the first track which would be called Nascence.

Similar to Aerith's Theme and Coldplay's Clocks, the borrowed fifth chord at the start gives it an ethereal quality, and after that it goes into some seventh-sy chords. I'm reasonably happy with how it's turned out so far; the last few months of listening to Jazz FM seems to have had an impression!

Originally I was going to follow up the track with three others, transparently named Adolescence, Acceptance and Twilight, but now I'd rather finish developing this one than half-assedly start more. I did attempt to make a start on a lively, battle-theme styled track for Adolescence but it ended up uncannily sounding like Gerudo Valley (this isn't the first time this has happened).

After that, I did an outline for the title screen:

It needs more development but it's serendipitous that raccoons fit  in the neo-noir setting. In fact, the protagonist could be recently released from prison and has to readjust to society and rediscover his/her values, a la Marv from Sin City.

I spent the remaining time tinkering around with the GUI, including getting some weather implemented. However I realised I was procrastinating on implementing skill(s), trinkets and job opportunities because I wasn't sure where they were going to fit in balance-wise, and hence what their mechanisms should be. So I finished off the day constructing some charts to help with the design:

I won't have a full day tomorrow (or Saturday) to jam but hopefully I'll finish off the chart and get to implementing (or deciding they aren't needed) those mechanics, as well as develop the title screen more.