Bubblegum Sunday Devlog 13

It’s been a little slow since the start of the new year, but we’ve been chipping away at this game ever more. Vivi has begun the huge challenge of adding a progression system. This essentially is a huge chunk of design that interacts with nearly every element of the game. Since the game will be very dialogue heavy, this also means the dialogue system has to be attuned to it. We decided to buy some Unity assets to help ourselves here, so hopefully this hurdle can be overcome rather sooner than later.

A big step we’ve taken is adding lights to Bubblegum Sunday. It really upgrades the artwork and pulls it all together. It’s really nice to see this finally make it in the game, after having tested it months ago. 

The effect is meant to provide a natural feel to the game and also make the assets more interesting by having their coloring change depending on where you are. Visually I want the game to have a natural look during daytime but become more artificial during nighttime so this is where the lighting will really begin to shine.

I’ve also begun trying to tie some of the UI elements together more and finding a cohesive style. I added some texture to some of the UI elements and I found this really helps make them feel a little less stale. For Make Me Yours I had an easy time designing a UI. Illustrative, fantasy, colorful. It was essentially a big part of the content. But for Bubblegum Sunday the UI has to support the content a lot more, so it has to play a lesser role and not demand so much. That’s certainly been a challenge for me, puzzling such a huge design element together and create a cohesive whole…

I also had to update all the map icons, because it had become obvious they were too large and the map very quickly felt cluttered. Considering the amount of locations I want, I had to go through the hassle of redrawing them all. You can also see the use of texture in the UI to make it feel more alive.

I gave the item cards a similar treatment.

While not implemented yet, I want the player to also collect items. Story related, clothing, money, mystery items, sellable items, etc. For this I need some kind of UI element as well. I decided this looks quite good.

I had mentioned this before but we implemented a shader to blur the background, which really gives the dialogue a very personal feeling. Here's a little Mercedes tease for you~

So what is next? Vivi has a lot of heavy lifting to do for the quest system. Meanwhile I will continue to add new locations and plan for the actual jobs and how they will work. I hope you're as excited to see it come together as I am!

Talk soon! (I promise!!)

Alba & Vivi