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why this PROFESSOR seems quite NUTTY!????? nyuk nyuk nyuk!!!
Why does this website exist?
Gamejolt is annoying, like really annoying. Its not very intuitive and theres a word cap on the developer log posts. WTF. I have a lot to say about my game and im not going to create a million chain posts like a fucking twitter thread.
But anyways this will be a dev log. as you can probably see, im not great at web design. but thats okay, i mostly made this for myself to keep a lot of the stuff i have to say about this game out of my head, and out of random disjointed discord messages to myself on a private server. so yeah. But if ANYONE else is reading this then i would have to say you have the attention span of a god, if i were you i would of clicked off to go to some other cooler site, or like browse twitter or something lmao.
Prunequest is an RPG im making using RPG maker MV. Ive been making it off and on somewhat for about like, what, 4 months? maybe more. It follows a teenage girl, Ashley, whose 19 and works a deadend job at "kaymart"; not to be confused with "K mart" of which is real and also leagaly different from my thing probably. Basically ashley is a lazy unmotivated cynical loser who feels like her life is aimless. she only really got the job because her dad asked her to, and she respects her father enough to start pulling her weight around the house instead of being a bum ass leech. But heres where things get interesting, shes told by her manager, JEROMY, spelt really weirdly like that, he tells her to get prunes from the storage closet since theyre running low. Now ashley is a lazy fuck that doesnt really like doing all that much at work but the prospect of taking as long as possible running an errand where she wont be bothered much sort of sounds nice, and geromy can be a real nag so she begrugingly does it. (also screw off about my spelling i know its bad) As she walks through the closet, in the dark mind you since she didnt bring a flashlight because it would make the next thing that happens in the game incredibly avoidable, that being that as she feels around in the dark looking for the prune basket, her hand veers to close to a anthropomorphic rat guy that hits her in the arm at full force with a baseball bat. She screams, as most normal people would do probably and passes out from the pain. Little does she know the rat guy (Maximus full name Maximus the Raximus) abducts her and takes her to another dimension through a portal, a new land called PRUNELAND. who was the rat guy?? is ashleys arm broken?? DOES SHE EVER FIND THE PRUNES?? uh well no probably not maybe... Many dangers awaits her, but also theres friends to be made, and people to blugeon to death with whatever wepons you can get a hold of in classic RPG style gameplay battles.
Some assets
When I originally had the idea for this game it was going to be more of a shitpost, but a few things changed that.
Playing some of the mother games really started to get me thinking about the story, and what i actually wanted to say with this game. Shitposts are fun but i think you can definately do both. Like the premice or however you spell that, is pretty weird and a little dumb, but what i really like about the mother games, and rpgs that take insporation off of them, is the usage of contrast in tone. Like, ok mother 2 for instance the WHOLE game is like this super goofy weird random bullshit go thing and then near the end, things get really crazy like eldrich horror crazy, and even a little disturbing with the whole kill the kids physical body to be transfered into robot vessels like thats pretty crazy i think. and from like the first like hour or so of the game, you could have never GUESSED that something like that would happen, and thats BECAUSE of how the tone switches. Prunequest will be um.... Simmilar in terms of tone switching thats for sure i have some pretty cool ideas for this that made me feel like a genius when i thought of it heheheh.
You might have noticed that i mentioned that i made a new character, juniper. For refrence the blonde, bored looking girl is Ashley, and the other is Juniper. Juniper is another sort of element in the story that gives it contrast. Like they are completely different from eachother, juniper and ashley, like ashley is bold, sardonic, very unserious and just a TAD ornery, and she wears her misery on her sleve. Juniper is the opposite of that, shes literal, Polite, mildmannered... shes, "Happy" but shes also very very lonely. Theres context for why she is that way, and i think im not going to explain it just yet but who knows i might reveal it later. but lets just say theyre like different yet the same, two different personalities, but there are certaian things that connect the two, like their lonelyness, and destitude, and it takes both of them interacting with eachother and having a relationship to realize that about themselves.
I think id say this; PRUNEQUEST SEEMS like a shitpost from the surface but if anything its more of a slowburn reltionship drama with an outlandish setting and weird sense of humor. I have much more to discuss but i think ill stop now.
Its Tuesday may 19th at 12:27 at time of writing this all. I dont know if ill come back to this even, if im being honest. Ill deffinately still work on PQ but as for... THIS like as in this website, idk... maybe. If ANYONE is reading this... and got this far. WOW. you actually give somewhat of a fuck... im honestly supprised. like im shoked :o <====== me being shoked. thats the face i made just now IRL. so yeah.
oh still here? uhhh i have a discord lets be friends (:
cronicringe_
Tuesday may 19th
Um im not sure why all of this is indented and not alligned with the edge of the website... but ok.
Most of what i typed prior was a basic overview of the game, not necissarily development updates so I guess ill actually catch you up with that.
So right now im sort of doing a lot of things, I have a lot of the plot beats and a general idea of what happens in the game and every manditory area you go to in order to progress, but im still thinking about what to fill into the game inbetween the areas you actually need to go to. Just to make the world seem more interesting to explore. But as for actual assets and content ive completed, Ive sprited a lot of the tiles for the kaymart area at the beginning of the game, fully srpited ashleys overworld like character model? theres probably a better word for that but i forget. I also made the music for the kaymart area, I have some basic npcs that I made a bit ago, and ovc I have the face sprites for ashley herself. Thats really all i have done for the first area of the game, but as for music I have Like 7 ish songs that ive made for future things including the main battle theme, shop theme, some area themes, one of them a friend helped me compose which was cool, and some more minor music stuff like the battle victory theme, and the theme that plays when ashley ventures into the closet. I also am actively working on spriting junipers overworld sprite, even though realisticly we are pretty far away from meeting her realitive to my progres on developing the game. I mean, i still havent even sprited out maximus, I only have concept art of him. But uh ill show off some of these things.
Spriting sure does take a lot of time... And its funny because i learned a special pixelart shading techniqe that i thought looks really nice, it blends the colors together and makes it look really clean. You can see i used that for making junipers sprites, the others I made before i discovered that. I dont really know if im going to re sprite stuff to make it look slightly nicer, I did update ashleys sprites just a tad utilizing this but shes a main character so i think it matters more, but at the same time the kaymart area is the first think youll see so maybe i should make it look nicer? idk. I guess i should focus on making it exist first huh. but kaymart is far from being completed, room needs to be bigger, needs npcs, dialog, more stuff... you can see that obviously.
The madotsuki like juniper sprite is for something WAY later on in the game. Mostly made it because idk it was fun and i came up with an idea for later on in the game that would need something like that. Ill explain why another time maybe
Here are some songs that I mentioned.
First one is the main battle theme (i say "main" because I plan on having a lot of battle themes. Because I like lisa the painful. And the mother series.) The 2nd one is a shop theme. Its a waltz so its in 4/3? i think. I made it a bit ago but super proud of it. last song is the kaymart theme. Not much to say about it, I used the earthbound soundfont. In fact all of these use some soundfonts, in one way or another. In this boss battle song im making, its called "behemoth battle" or maybe just behemoth IDK it has like 6 different soundfont instruments from different games, PLOK, Mother 3, Mother 1+2, Pokemon black and white, pokemon platinum... But ive showed some of my friends it and they liked it so far but its far from completion. Itd be a waste of time showing you it since its not complete but Ill post it once its done.
I think my fav song is prunegression, I really like the melody and how the song progresses. I tried to use the main melody as a motif in other songs, specifically the behemoth battle song and in another song which im not going to show because i still think it needs work, but its called THE FIELDS. A main area theme. Also I just think the purcussion is really good, even though its two basic drummax drum melodies that are going over eachother, and man do i think they sound good. You also might notice the Megalo strike back instrument. I really like it. megalo strike back is such an amazing song, and its just really cool using that "instrument" even though im pretty sure its just the earthbound overdrive guitar... Im not sure why there are two different soundfonts for that now that i think about it but oh whatever.
some other fun things to note about prunegression, I used the Brandish soundfont as well as the MOTHER 3 soundfont, you can hear it at 1:47 to the end of the song, the orchestra hit thats used in wess' dance in the Osohe castle scene, cmon its classic you have to know what i mean. as for the brandish soundfont the sort of guitar sounding thing at the end that brings the song to a close, thats the Acoustic guitar instrument, I havent played BRANDISH but I have listened to a lot of the OST specifically the PC98 version, super insportational to me, and in window shopping you can actually hear the PC98 instruments too, although if you arent too keen on PC98 osts you probably wouldnt notice it.
But i Think ill end off this for today.
Well its been a while. Did you know that its my birthday today? pretty cool huh? SOME THINGS THAT I FEEL ARE IMPORTANT TO ADDRESS:
okay so im sorry for giving off the impression that this would be super regular updates. how this whole thing was set up was a little misleading in that respect, and I am sorry for it SEEMING like ive abandoned this...
At some point i decided that i wont update this very often, because im pretty slow with things and sort of a busy guy, and when i did do some little thing, i didnt want it to just be like "UhH ToDay I MaDe A sInGlE TiLe, yAy" like thats just dumb, id rather update this when theres an important BIG development like what i will show you guys soon, the many things ive done. Im thinking that for each main area i complete ill update this but IDK.
Four months for... 9 minutes? GREAT!!! (thats horrible...) but for real, theres still little polish to be done i think, mostly i have to fix the events in the closet because they play infinitely whenever you step on them, but other then that i think its in a nice state.
The goal of this intro is to sort of introduce you to ashley, as one of the main characters, in which the story is (for the most part) from her perspective, I wanted to sement her personality as an annoying asshole. She hates her job, hates her life, and is all around a massive loser. I wanted the intro to be sort of normal, maybe familiar, as in the average setting of a retail workers job. Just to make the contrast have more wiplash for what happens next...
I think the most fun part of all this, was making the dialoge, and making some of the SFX for the closet scene. It was fun, and something ive never done before. Sure, ive used audacity before many times, but this was using it in a whole new way, it was just fun! As for the dialoge, I really tried to make it so more of HER voice and sort of way that she speaks is prominent, and doesnt just mimmic me. I think a lot of people struggle with that, and im not perfect at it, but im happy with my work. And also a lot of the dialoge is funny to me, which is great concidering im only really doing this for myself primarily, lol.
And just keep in mind, a lot of the default SFX for menus, and the menus themselves are going to be remade by me, my goal with this whole thing is to try to not have many defult asset things in this, but for now, im going to move on to other stuff, since thats something that doesnt IMMEDIATELY need to happen now.
since I last updated this, ive been playing a lot of RPG maker games, i completed OFF, Jimmy and the pulsating mass, and SPACE FUNERAL. right now im thinking of finishing SUITS: a busness RPG, and also Space funeral Legend of EARTHBIRTH. playing all of these though, got me to realize something about style. I think that its EXTREMELY important for games like these, to have a very uniqe style. with rpg maker games, there are SO MUCH online that has been made with these engines through out the years that are COMPLETE SLOP. And i think that what makes a lot of them bad is their use of defult assets. OVC thats not EVERYTHING thats bad about them, like even SF has defult assets but even then, its for a reason, yknow? Basically I think for the next area of the game, (inside the strange world that most of the game takes place in) I want it to look really different compared to the first area. Im not the best at pixel art, but notice how a lot of things in kaymart, (other then the people) arent really outlined?. Im thinking that im going to make the next area have a lot of black outlines and more uniqe colors, then the drab ones i used for kaymart, just to give it a weird offkilter (cartoonish?) feeling that i think would be interesting. after playing these games, i realize that i REALLY value the strange aethetics that those games go for, and how every detail, npc, dialoge, music, characters... all add to that strange surreal feeling. And... I just really dig that. I want to create that.
boy do i got some TRACS for you...
First off, this is is hopital. yes the song name is based off of that one meme what about it?
This song might be one of the best songs ive ever made in my opinion. Its inspired off of the hospital theme from earthbound, and the hotel theme from the same game. I like how reggae the hospital theme in earthbound is, its really strange given the fact that it doesnt really fit the hospital setting like, AT ALL. but thats okay because it makes up for it by being a really groovy track with an addictive baseline. This track is not reggae, but it is in the same vain i believe. I utilized the earthbound soundfont, Chrono trigger soundfont, and the MOTHER 3 soundfont for this track, the last two soundfonts kick in at the end. fun fact about this track, i was just randomly messing around with the mother 3 sf and i was like WTF THESE ARE THE BONGOS FROM THE STUPID SHANTY THEME WHEN UR LIKE RIDING FARDY or whatever his name is... I decided to add them in purely because of that. anyway I really like the CT strings, i think they sound awesome, and thats not the only track ill show today with those strings... Another thing to note is that i REALLY like how the piano echos, my friend pointed this out to me when i showed him and like, YEAH... its awesome. i genuinley think its catchy. but anyway we sorta have a lot to get through so NEXT.
This is the fields. Its meant to be a main area theme pretty early on.
I honestly did a lot of tweaking with this one, and even now i think ill MAYBE make it better, ill keep you guys posted if I DO but i do think its in a decent enough state for the game. I used a lot of soundfonts and stuff its sort of a mess really, but from what i remember off the top of my head, i think i used some of the earthbound soundfont for the venus vocals you can hear at one point, and the pc98 soundfont. When i was making this first, i was like super obsessed with SYNCRONICITY, or the stage clear theme for brandish. I used to listen to the brandish pc98 ost so much a few months ago, not like i dont like it now, ive just started listening to other stuff. But theres some parts where i tried to recreate the stage clear melody, its cool i guess. I also was messing around, i didnt know what to do, and i accidently made the NORTHERNLIGHT melody from deltarune and i was like ... huh. WELL ILL KEEP THIS IN. i think it adds a little erieness to the song, which i think fits the moment well. Fun fact about this song, the main melody is basically a motif from the end of prunegression, it was just some random melody i made when making that battle song, but i decided that it was cool and made it into a motif, already a few songs have that, most of them im not finished with though. but you will get to hear another one with the fields motif so ill show you that now...
Did you know that eupora is a real town in missisipi? crazy stuff right??????
What if i told you ive BEEN THERE. Yeah pretty CRAZY, INSANE even...
but what if i never even left...?
Jokes aside, i did 100% DEFINITELY leave upora, (Local legends aside...) and i dont live there so go there if you want but ya wont see me...!
Im really happy with this song. Its creepy like its cousin song, THE FIELDS, but i think its a little more upbeat, and it honestly gives of this somewhat desolate and a little somber feeling, just all round very off kilter. I think thats perfect for this strange town.
before i made this song, i knew that i needed a town theme but i didnt really know where to start. At one point i went on a roadtrip with friends and we stopped in this bumfuck town and saw some interesting stuff. something so SHOCKING... SO INSPIRING that when i came home, i knew i just HAD to add this town into my weird game. this song about captures the feeling of being in eupora. some things to note, i used the pc98 soundfont for the main melody, it also has some earthbound for the venus vocals, and CT strings because I LOVE CT STRINGSSSSSS. all around im really proud of this song. and the main melody, its the acoustic guitar from pc98, that melody i really REALLY like. its basically a like BETTER version of the fields motif, i think its catchy, and it will be used more.
this is forest 3. is this the third forest in the game? No. Why on EARTH would you think that???
The name is a bit random, its just the third ideration of the theme that me and my friend made. and i couldnt really think of a good name so... yeah. Idk ill prob come up with something in game to call it, but i think the song will just be called that for the heck of it. IF TOBY FOX CAN MAKE A SONG INSINUATING ITS THE THIRD IN A SERIES, I CAN TOO.
This track is really cool though, and as I said my awesome music wizard friend help me make this. Basically the song started out as a piano sketch by me and we sat in vc for a bit making this result. We both think that the vocals are really cool, and adds to the weirdness of the song. For a bit of context, this song plays in a forest maze.
This is Behemoth battle. I think months ago i mentioned this song, how it was being worked on but wasnt finished. Well here it is.
This is supposed to be a "miniboss" theme, its a more generic track that will be used for many stronger enemies in the game. I used A LOT of soundfonts for this Mother 3, earthbound, plok, pokemon platnum, just a bunch of SHIT. But i am pretty proud of this song! i think it sounds cool, and uses the same motif as prunegression at a certain point, adding a bit of concistency between some of the battle songs. for all of the like 5 people that have played jimmy and the pulsating mass, you can think of this song as the "Righteous Scrabble" of the game. (although it uh like isnt as PEAK.) Overall i had fun making this song, but i do think its a little repetative...
FAAARRRR OUTTTTT!!
This is a theme used pretty early on, for Maximus.
I had hit a roadblock when making this theme for like a month, I just didnt know what i wanted to do with it... that was until i was at work listening to some homestuck songs, and listened to davesprite and was like... damn this would be a good theme for maximus, and so i decided to base the song a little off of it. You can mostly hear it in the drum pattern. I didnt necessarily MEAN to make it sound so jazzy, but i think its sort of "cool" which i think fits the character since hes so dumb he actually thinks hes this really cool guy. That being said, hes NOTHING like dave strider... This song is very earthbound, i really like what the noise does, as my friend pointed out, it sounds like "your name please" from earthbound which I dont think it tottaly does but i mean yes the noise is from that song, It adds a lot of texture to it, gives it a feeling of like some sort of party with jazz music playing in the backround (or atleast thats what i think of when i hear it) but i think it fits the character. Definately one of my fave songs so far in the ost. SUPER PROUD OF HOW IT TURNED OUT!!
I call these extras because i think they either might be HEVILY edited, or just completely remade.
but i still wanted to show them regardless because it was something i was working on...
Both of these are supposed to be area themes, with frozen garden being a later game one, and the catacombs one being a bit earlier in the game than the other one. I think frozen garden is okay, atleast for the initial idea, but my friend thinks it needs a lot of work, i trust his judgement so we'll probably get around to working on this one eventually. as for wonderlust catacombs... I was inspired by this kirby fansong but... I dont really like this song much. I think it needs a lot of work. They cant all be winners cant they...? But regardless the Wonderlust Catacombs will be an actual area so i felt it was relevant to include here.
with that, that'll be all of the music thats "done", i guess. some im more confident in than others, but im proud of them all even if i think one is worse, Im proud of myself for making something anyways, because you cant get better without trying!
some closing thoughts: Theres this AWESOME battle theme that my friend was working on, because he like made this one song called "mind goblin" and i REALLY liked it and said it would be cool for him to make a more upbeat version of the song for the game and hes still working on that... But honestly its an amazing song, i think its on YT see for yourself:
Also as i said earlier, i finished OFF the game a bit ago, and ive been thinking of making this pepper steak ish battle theme using some old hip hop samples... Ever heard of "public enemy"? i say that like theyre not super popular lol. But i like them and theres this one song that has this awesome beat that i might sample. Stay tuned for that...
pretty self explanitory.
I have a discord server that only i am in where i just post random stuff about the game when it pops into my head. (youll have to guess whos saying what...)
these are GREAT.
Well thats all ill say for now. Im pretty set on trying to see this out. I want to just have something, something thats mine, that i can come back to in years and be like, "yeah i remember working really hard to do something that i thought was cool" I dont mind if people think this is shit, or dumb, maybe it is but i still want to do it just to entertain myself atleast...
to tell my story.
by some miracle you are still reading this, thanks for caring i guess.
now if you'll excuse me, i have some mob psyco to watch lol. good anime btw. PEACE
