Dream Diver - An Adventure In The Mind Of A Troubled Woman (0.1 Out!)

Friday Devlog!
Most of what I did over the past few days was figuring out the battle animations and fixing up the graphics to have a more consistent visual style. I also got a few more models done. It’s gonna be a shorter devlog because it was more involved, but I feel like I’m getting closer to being done.

Onto the battle system!
So the very very first thing I wanted to do was fix Velma’s design so she looks closer to the show. I also had to fix her skin / hair color to be much different because of how the visual effects change colors. She looks really cute though.

Next I did an idle animation for her and really made sure it was finished so I could make sure I could do animations. It looks really good. Originally I was gonna try learning animation and then just picking from a consistent area, but I think it’d look better stylistically if I hand-animated each of the frames. I pretty much started at making sure the bounce was good, then animated from her skirt up. I love how it looks tbh.
2024-10-11 velma idle promo

After this I wanted to do a rough draft of each of the attacks.
First one was her ass attack. I was inspired by fighting moves where the character hits with their ass lmao. I also wanted to make it more cartoony where she flies back and stumbles to get her footing back. it’s really cute. I think eventually I’ll have it to where there’s a small chance where if she misses she gets nommed for a turn or two.
2024-10-11 velma ass attack promo

After this I wanted to make an “attack” for Sasha where she falls on her face and it takes a while for her to get up. This is a more direct way to showcase that she’s more of a support unit and can’t attack, also emphasizing how she feels powerless in her own head. Starting with her preparing herself, then swinging and missing, then stumbling to get up, then fidgeting a bit afterwards. Also yes that is the Family Guy death pose lmfao.

The numbers / colors are for me to see what part of the battler sheet grid I’m working on.
2024-10-11 sasha fake attack promo

Here’s a slowed down version of it so you can see all the frames.
2024-10-11 sasha fake attack slow promo

This part of the animation also ended up being pretty good for a low HP animation. Though it being flipped is sort of annoying cause she’s got heterochromia. I think if I animate with Dragonbones in the future I can make animations more varied and tight.
2024-10-11 sasha low health promo

Rounding this section off I also made a short use item animation for her.
2024-10-11 sasha use item promo
2024-10-11 sasha use item slow promo

In the future I’ll probably use ren’py to test out animations because it’d be a lot faster than running rpg maker for every little alteration.
After this first release, I’m also gonna probably figure out how to use Dragonbones to make more varied and better timed animations cause I think it would make me able to make the combat feel a lot nicer.

Onto the texture fixes
So I wanted to start with Sasha’s room. I got a lot done. Lighting’s off for these.

I ended up settling on a darker wood for the doors / moulding and her walls being a soft pink. I think it contrasts extremely well. I also wanted to make most of her room’s aesthetic be either brown or pink. I think making all the wood a different type gives it a nice touch tbh.

One of the things I feel really proud of is the CRT model though. I ended up going for vertical lines instead of horizontal lines for the vents and I think the texture warping makes it look cool.

Also I added a bisexual flag above her bed cause it’s my game I can showcase Sasha’s bi if I want to lmao. I also wanted it to actually have stitching that you can see if you look close enough.

For Sasha’s closet I wanted to give her a bifold closet because it’s more visually interesting but it also signals to the player that it’s different than her main door.

Onto the library
So for the library I ended up doing a 60’s/70’s style wall panelling for the walls. I might still mess around with the colors but I feel like it really goes well with the artstyle I’ve been going for. Originally it was gonna just be HSV noise like in the bedroom but I feel like the straight lines help the walls from becoming a confusing mess. It looks super nice. I also started texturing everything so that it’s more consistent. There’s only 2 shades, and instead of doing black lines for the lines, it’s a darker variant of the color, so it’s /almost/ black. I think it adds a lot, and really showcases the visual style I’m starting to develop for this.


Then the last thing I did I actually started this morning, but I had an idea where for boss battles there’s an inital phase before the actual RPG battle that involves dodging attacks. I feel like it’d make the boss battles more interesting and distinct from the regular battles.
2024-10-11 damage test promo

I think I’m closing in on finishing up with the initial demo. In other news I actually have the ending figured out. I’m obviously not gonna say what it is but it’s a good one. I think over the next few days I’m gonna work on adding the rest of the animations and beginning to finalize them. Also working on finishing up texture mapping / texturing the models.

13 Likes

im so fugin excited!

1 Like

Gosh, that flail animation gives her such failgirl vibes, and I love it.

2 Likes

I’m really excited to get this out. Hopefully in a couple weeks.

1 Like

Yeah I wanted to put some of Velma’s failgirlness from the shows into the game lol

1 Like

Tuesday Devlog!
Hi everyone! I didn’t do as much as what I’ve been doing normally, because I think I’ve been overworking myself a bit (I’ve been spending 6+ hours a day on this for most of the past month after going on a walk and getting groceries) and spent a good chunk of Sunday asleep. I got so stressed that I lied down and ended up falling asleep for 6-7 hours. It’s unrelated to game stuff, and doing game stuff is actually really fun and distracts me. It’s annoying cause I wanna work on the game all day, but my body’s telling me I need to rest lol. I don’t have a job and barely talk to anyone so it’s really easy for me to get sucked into this for 5-10 hours when my OCD wants to cooperate. So the past couple of days has been spent doing a little bit of work, but mostly resting and chilling by continuing to play through Kingdom Hearts 2.

Anyway! Onto the stuff I got done.
So the biggest thing I actually got figured out was the opening sequence. I’m not gonna post the progress video cause I want it to be a surprise, but it’ll be really good. I’ll post a screenshot though. I’m making the opening cinematic in ren’py.

After this I made what I think is the first mostly completed map of the game. It happens right after the cinematic, and I think it’d be a good teaser for the kind of vibe I’m gonna start going for with this.


I honestly really love the vibes that I’m going for here. I want to make the game uncomfortable but not dangerous. Like nothing’s gonna attack you or jump out at you or anything, but there will be a feeling of unease because the game takes place in Sasha’s head.

The other things I did outside of this was working on plushies for Sasha’s room and then starting to work on the Velma poster, cause I think I needed a break from what I was doing before.


This one I’d been working on modelling on and off. It’s been taking longer to do because it’s a humanoid model, but I something I thought would be fun would be making the Cirno fumo a 3D model instead of just a sprite. It’s not done yet but I love how it’s turning out so far.


After I posted the Cirno fumo, someone in my server suggested the Ikea shark and I decided to spend an hour or so making a rough draft of it. Sasha’s not trans, but she had trans classmates in high school and thought the shark was cute.


The last thing I wanted to do was start working on the Velma poster for the wall, cause as you progress through the game more waifu pictures would start popping up on the wall. I need to actually spend some time fixing it up or doing a closer angle, cause she looks a bit too much like Neco Arc lmfao.

Anyway, the next few days I’m gonna spend taking it easy while I work on stuff, and hopefully I can get this update out in a couple of weeks.

10 Likes


Here’s a shot I did for the Itch post that I figured I’d post here too. It’s nice.

6 Likes

No real big dev log today. I got really burnt out a few days back so I’ve been trying to decompress and get my mental energy back. I almost finished playing through Kingdom Hearts 2 so that’s something.

I did draft out some ideas but it’s mostly writing based. Mainly I wanna add more NPCs in the game after you finish a world, and this would give me a chance to actually add cute guys and hot guys, cause Sasha’s bisexual and it’d be sorta weird to only have women in her fantasies lmao. I’m using Psychonauts as an inspiration; and one of the few negatives in the game is that when you finish a world, it’s really empty due to the lack of enemies. It feels sort of sad, and I think that having it where the worlds feel more lively and friendly after you finish them would be nice and help with the overall story arc for Sasha.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have some sort of progress on something out on Tuesday. I appreciate everyone for being so patient.

5 Likes

Hiyo. Tuesday Devlog!

I’ve been mostly relaxing the past few days, but last night I started feeling motivated to do some work. I think that taking a week or so off is good cause I’ve been working as much as I could for like over a month. Also all that time working on my other games before then.

I mostly have spent the past few days playing through more of the Kingdom Hearts series and I got through 2 and started 358/2. Despite it being seen as one of the weaker games in the series I’m having fun with it.

I made a couple of interesting discoveries over the past few days.

  1. The Atari Jaguar was put into the public domain by Hasbro in 1999 and there’s forums for developing on it. The patents for the console were also released to the public at that time.
  2. There’s a lot of resources for developing homebrew games for the SEGA Dreamcast.

So now I have a lot more motivation to actually finish this game up lmao. It’d be cool if after finishing Dream Diver I remade it for the Dreamcast. There’s other Dreamcast homebrews on Itch so it’s not out of the realm of reality. It wouldn’t be for a few years though. Just a nice little “man this would be a cool thing to work towards.” The aesthetic I’m going for with Dream Diver is pretty much going to be something in that era anyway, so it’d be cool to go the extra mile one day.

Speaking of that, something I started working on because I was inspired. 358/2 Days is essentially a very polished PS1/Nintendo 64 game, and it made me wonder if I could try doing a low poly Sasha model. Turns out that Cirno fumo was a good idea because it gave me a bit of practice making humanoid models. It’s really rough right now and the only textured bit is her face so I could look at something other than a manniquin. I still need to work on her hair but I like how she’s coming along. I’m not gonna use these models for now and they’ll just be practice and stuff I work on when I feel like it, but it’s really fun trying to figure out how to model low poly humans. She currently looks much better from the front than the side lol

Most of what I’m gonna probably be doing over the next week or so is just fixing up texture maps and models and stuff. I started on these last night.

So I feel like I’m mostly done. The last couple things I need to do are just texture mapping / rough textures for the models, doing rough drafts for the battle animations, fixing up the story, then copying everything I need to a new project. It’s a little tedious, but having a development project and a deployment project will probably work best so the released game can be streamlined.

Also looking into Dragonbones I realized it’s a skeletal animation program and not frame by frame, and I found out about the YED sidebattler extra frames plugin. I’ll probably work with that instead cause it’s closer to what I want.

Anyway, I’m gonna probably set a soft deadline of Halloween for the updated demo release. See you then.

6 Likes

Sorry about the random multiposts, OCD’s really bad for no reason today.

2 Likes

Oh right I forgot. Something fun in Kingdom Hearts 2 was gathering materials to make optional equipment that boosted stuff like strength defense and magic, it’d be fun to do something like that.

2 Likes

Friday Devlog!

I finally got back on working on stuff the past few days, and I feel like I’m closing in on releasing it. Most of what I did was just working on getting all the rough textures done. The most important thing I did was updating the NW.js file so the game runs better, and omg it runs way better.

TLDR what NW.js is a program to help Javascript apps run. The version that came with RPG Maker MV is at least 5 years old, and the current version I updated it to is only about a year old. I didn’t update it to the most recent version cause apparently 72.0 is the last version that’s 100% compatible with Windows 7/8/8.1. I’ll probably update the NW.js for Mac and Linux so I can release it on those platforms and not have them be a laggy mess lol.

Anyway what I did was instead of doing a whole texture for most things, I just dragged all the polygons in the UV map to a color that’s a good placeholder. I’m not gonna 100% texture stuff because it’d take another week or so to do that, and I wanna get this out asap. I think it works for now. I did wanna texture the vending machine and do a placeholder for the hallway’s upper window. I also wanted to properly texture the floor for the hallway as well.

The next few days is gonna start with copying everything I need to a new project just so it’s cleaner and there’s less fluff to possibly lag the game. After that I need to work on:

  • Finishing the last couple of pixelart objects
  • Finishing the walking sprites I need
  • Properly linking all the rooms / lighting
  • Doing the opening cinematic, at least a rough version of it
  • Doing a rough version of all the battle sprites I need
  • Getting all the music / SFX I need (possibly less so for the SFX, but I’ll add some)
  • Tightening up / expanding the current story

Also stuff like playtesting and other various little things. I feel like I’m in the homestretch. I don’t know if I will get it out by Halloween, but it’s definately possible. I’ll know for sure on Tuesday.

There’s not gonna be a LOT of horny stuff in this first demo unfortunately, as a game like this has a long setup period. As I get better at making assets, and hopefully become less stressed financially, I’ll be able to get stuff out faster. I’ve got lots of ideas.

12 Likes

Tuesday Devlog!

So I got the project copied over and now I’m working on getting the story done. I’ve had the story in my head for a while and I’m working on expanding it out. I also developed a good system for doing text because the way I did it was using a transparent textbox and then having graphics that pop up.

Also omg I don’t know why centering text isn’t a thing bundled in RPG maker, but I found a plugin and it probably has saved future me hundreds of hours because I don’t need to manually center text now.

Pretty much I have a switch to show character faces, then another one to show the textbox, then another one to change the position of it based on how many lines there are. I spent most of yesterday actually working on developing a good process for doing textboxes cause I’m not using the default RPG maker one.

I feel like I’m getting close to being done. It’s possible for me to get it out by Halloween, but realistically it’ll probably be a couple days after. Hopefully within a week this will finally be out. I’m extremely excited to show it off.

As an aside, I will have an area in the menu (as well as a document in the game’s files) that shows what the controls are. For example I don’t think a lot of people know that you can hit F4 to make RPG maker games fullscreen, or that you can in fact use a controller. I think having an actual control guide is good because I’m have to assume at least a handful of people who play this will have never played an RPG maker game. Also because the game is in 3D with a movable camera, it plays much different than a top down game.

This is a pretty short devlog, but I’m almost done I think. I’m gonna work on finishing the story, then all the remaining graphics. I’m gonna bs as much as I can because I’ll have more time in the next update to clean things up. I am tired lmao.

14 Likes

No bigger devlog today. I’ve been plugging away at finishing the game. Hopefully I can get it out within the week. I’m almost done with all the events, and I still need to copy over the battle system and figure it out. I’m still only gonna do rough animations for the battle system for now, but hopefully for the next update I’ll have time to polish them.

5 Likes

Short update. Am starting to get burnt out with updating this. I’m going to focus on getting the music figured out, linking everything together and making sure it works, then sending out test copies. After that I’ll release it. There’s no battles or shops set up yet, but it’s getting to the point where I’m burning myself out with the project and only have the energy to maybe do a half hour to an hour or so of work a day. It’s not gonna be completely fleshed out, but I’d rather release it unfinished now than wait a couple of months.

5 Likes

take rest, drink water, sleep

2 Likes

It’s really difficult for me to take breaks cause I think I want this game to be made more than anyone lol. It’s fun and exciting and I kinda lose track on how much energy I have. I’m relaxing though.

3 Likes

No dev log today. Taking it easy this week.

7 Likes

Short devlog.

Working on finishing up. I’m not gonna do the battle system or shops yet. Next update I’ll try. I only really need to do a couple lines of text, one or two faces, then do all the music. I’ve been rewatching Mystery Incorporated so it’s helping with characterizing Velma.

Here’s a few of the faces I did over the past few days. Hopefully I can post a release date sometime soon.
faces_sasha_anxietyfaces_sasha_bottomfaces_velma_scaredfaces_velma_stare

8 Likes

Working on doing CGs now. I’ve been sick but I got all the cutscene scripts into a new ren’py project I formatted for testing out how to arrange cutscenes. It’s a lot better arrange them it in ren’py because it has more or less instant reloading, so I can make adjustments to scenes before I put them into rpg maker. I’m having fun finally doing some renders and stuff.


Anyway I probably won’t have much to post about until I actually get this out, so see y’all when I release it.

8 Likes