Hello, lovely players! I’m YaMao, and here’s the February game development update for *Shiba Sweet*.
This month, I’ve continued to gracefully jump between 3D art and programming, and even ventured into the unfamiliar territory of translation.
A. Development Highlights for This Month:
a. Improved the Black Shiba Merchant's kitchen expansion dialogue system
To allow players to place more tables and baking tools, the kitchen can be expanded as it upgrades, with players deciding if they want to expand. Ordering the expansion is easy—just talk to the Black Shiba Merchant and confirm the expansion request. And you’ll get a bigger kitchen in 3 days!
The dialogue system turned out to involve more aspects than I initially anticipated. The logic needs to account for various conditions. Such as whether the player has enough funds, the current construction level, and the size of the kitchen upgrade when the construction is completed.
b. Completed the art for all NPC characters
NPCs are an essential part of *Shiba Sweet*, and they can be seen both when ordering dessert bento box and in the streets outside the shop. The NPCs I’ve created so far are all different animals—there are Teddy Bear, Bunny Rabbit, Jumping Frogs, and various cats and dogs, all enriching the world of *Shiba Sweet*. (My personal favorite is the Schnauzer; after finishing the model, I just think it’s incredibly cute!)
For the scale of an indie game, I may have created too many NPC characters. But to be fair, it's to satisfy my own enjoyment as a player. I truly love seeing adorable NPCs living in the game world. When they wear cute clothes that change with the seasons and walk around, I genuinely feel like my soul is immersed in that virtual yet incredibly real world.
c. Set up a complete weather, season, and date system
I didn’t want every day in the game to just be a monotonous sunny day. So this month, I added the creation of a weather system. Each day in every season may have different weather changes, including sunny, cloudy, foggy, light rain, heavy rain, light snow, heavy snow, and more. The leaves and grass in the streets will also change according to the seasons, with additional effects like falling cherry blossoms, green leaves, maple leaves, dandelions flying, and fireflies at night.
The weather system may not be the most crucial feature, but I love how it adds to the immersive feeling and makes the game world feel more real. The seasons will also influence the setting of various festivals and events. I hope these settings will connect all the elements together and create more fun and engaging experiences.
d. Optimized the recipe creation workflow
All the dessert-making processes are completed a few months ago, but the recipe illustrations are still pending. This month, the progress on recipes was mostly related to the art side. Previously, the recipes were created by setting different languages in a graphic software, exporting each as a separate image file. And then using those images as textures in the game engine.
The improved workflow now involves creating the basic recipe content in graphic software, exporting versions without text, and then adding the text in the game engine using the UI system. The major benefit of this process is that if any text needs to be corrected in the future, I can directly edit it in the game engine without having to modify each language version in the graphic software. This also significantly reduces the memory usage of the texture files which means it would help the game use less storage space.
e. Created a list for translation text
Translating game text is like "a shallow puddle that seems harmless but becomes deeper with one step forward." This is the biggest insight I had when I started working on how to handle unified translation text in Unreal Engine. Before diving into the translation process, a lot of work is needed to organize and filter the texts that need to be translated. Developers must determine which content needs translation and which content, such as simply numerical changes, does not require translation.
Another part I had never really thought about is the need to use a consolidation system for repeated words or sentences in the translation. This ensures that the same word or sentence comes from the same source, so it doesn't appear more than once in the translation text. This not only helps organize the translation more efficiently, but it also prevents translators from charging twice for the same text when it's shared with translators in different countries. As we know translation fees are usually based on word count.
B. Wrapping up
February was a steady journey forward. Sometimes, it feels like I didn’t accomplish a lot. But when reviewing the development progress, I realized that I’ve made significant strides with the game. It’s a great feeling to applaud myself for the hard work, and *Shiba Sweet* is gradually taking shape. I look forward to the day when players can create joyful memories in the lovely kitchen of *Shiba Sweet*, through baking and managing the wonderful shop.
Thank you for reading this far. See you in next month’s devlog!
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