Yo! This Developer Diary is all about flowcharts and such! So between learning Unity and having a full-time life Hush Blossom planning does continue, all of this being done in a much more efficient manner than before.
Up to now I've been keeping a OneNote running for all of the planning. Unfortunately this quickly becomes the equivalent of a desk full of papers, and ideas and documents quickly become outdated as designs change, moreover it's much less organised than this new method!
I've been using Flowcharts for a while with draw.io, #notanad, #couldbeanad. At my current work use of flowcharts have been used for getting through tasks in a much more agile manner, so it made sense to try and use this for Hush Blossom.
I've posted a few of these to Twitter (go follow us there if you don't already!) but my first use for flowcharts was getting an idea of basically all of the functions in the game. It gives me an idea for the scope of the project and also acts as a relevancy checker. I.e. Is this feature either necessary or still relevant?
The above flowchart shows off all of the different sections, in different colours to show the divide. Pink for Lingerie Crafting, Red for Hunting, Blue for General Shop Management and Green for Selling and Advertisement.
There's still a ton to add to this, but it's mostly smaller and minute additional details, this has already capture the core mechanics extremely well, and makes future planning feel much less daunting.
The next step after this was to look at the FTUE (Or First Time User Experience), specifically looking at the way features are rolled out to the player. This also allows for something that's extremely important to me, branching paths, even in the choice of what tutorial you get next - and potentially even more important, the ability to skip tutorials.
This is also a work in progress, and is likely something that will undergo a few changes as we move closer into development. But there's truly no nicer feeling than grasping concepts and turning them into tangible reality.
Next up is a smaller one but with important details for story. Both the character web and character backstory arc and relationship planner.
This will allow us to easier flesh out characters storylines, and future additions will allow a time-based storyline that we can edit and flesh out as we go, making story and character development a ton easier to plan out in the coming days.
Last but not least is the UI/UX hierarchy workshop. A game like Hush Blossom lives and dies with workable, intelligent and accessible UI - we need to get this right. With that in mind it made sense to really dive deep into what we'll be needing, every screen, menu, option, submenu and detail has to be covered. You don't get anything for free. The below covers the Home Shop Menu Area of the game, and no doubt it's a small sample of everything we'll be needing.
Look at all of those boxes with lines attached to them, ridiculous. Granted this part of the game is arguably the most complex, but if we can get this figured out as a team we can do anything.
So where does this lead us in the future? Simply put, a much cleaner planning strategy going forward. This project could take years, but every step is worth taking, especially one in the right direction. We'll be updating this blog as often as we can, even if it's just nerdy flowchart porn. But my next challenge, alongside learning an entirely new engine (with the help of Udemy and all the free time a full-time employee can muster) is really getting a feel for the UI and how it looks. In the coming weeks I'll likely be playing and experimenting with a few different core styles to really nail down how the game is going to look - so keep your eyes peeled. And if you're reading this, thanks for being with us this early in development. Keep on Blossoming. <3
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