AyeeJ's Site

Man, it’s already Friday.

I don’t actually have a whole lot to talk about this week in terms of development progress — I’ve been wrecked with tiredness and haven’t done much beyond tinkering with spreadsheets. Still, that’s something.

The Item Sheet Overhaul

The old item spreadsheets were laid out in a “this level has these NPCs, and they sell these items” kind of way, but I didn’t like how fragmented that felt — especially since some NPCs across levels might sell the same things.

Instead, I’ve changed it to be one unified spreadsheet of all items, with dropdowns for:

• where they can be found
• who sells them
• and when they’re available

In the actual GDD, I’ll still include clean tables per level, so designers can quickly see who’s selling what and when. But for back-end logic and implementation, this master sheet feels way more useful.

My spreadsheets are looking really tidy now (if I do say so myself). Colour-coded, neatly formatted — each item has an auto-generated ID based on its name (pulling the first three letters), though I’ll need to tweak that soon. Right now, Small, Medium, and Large Health Potions all become HEA, which obviously doesn’t work long-term. I’ll revise the naming structure soon to avoid overlaps like that.

Items also now track:

• the level they appear in
• their rarity (mostly for mob drops)
• stack limit (10 is the standard)
• item type (weapon, food, armour, etc.)

Armour is currently broken down into chest, legs, etc., which I know is going to balloon the scope. But I like the added player customisation it allows. If it gets messy, I can always consolidate later.

Talking Shop with a Fellow Dev

I spoke to someone studying game dev this week, which was really refreshing. They asked what people should put in their portfolios — especially programmers — and my main advice was:

Do devlogs.

Seriously. Show your process. Show how you think. Show what changed and why.

When I was in uni, devlogs were super structured:

• What did you work on?
• What went well?
• What would you change next time?

I’m not quite there yet. Right now, this is mostly me laying out thoughts and explaining decisions — but that is the process. I’m already seeing things I’d do differently.

One example: my original GDD layout. It separated NPCs, enemies, and levels into separate sections. But now that the document’s pushing 47+ pages, I’ve switched to a level-by-level breakdown. It’s just easier to navigate. Definitely something I’d do from the start next time.

If you’re a programmer — comment your code. Write notes. Future-you will thank you. And if you ever work with a team, those notes will matter even more.

Mascot Musings

I’ve been thinking more about a mascot or plush design for the game. I was inspired by Peak (which is fantastic, by the way) — their mascot Bing Bong is such a weird little gremlin, but so effective. It made me think about marketing-forward characters that actually fit the tone and world.

I considered:

• a baby bird (one of the first enemies you meet)
• a little Wisp (tied to the Relic Forge)

…but neither feel right yet. I don’t want to just slap a face on a random early mob and call it a day. It needs to make sense in-world, and be cute, a little weird, and potentially symbolic. Still noodling on it.

Life Outside Dev (Kind Of)

Didn’t see Lenny last weekend, which probably didn’t help with my mood. I’ve been staying up too late, mostly playing League of Legends. I was climbing out of Silver, but then my client crashed and marked me AFK. I lost all my LP and now I’m on a brutal losing streak that’s making me irrationally mad. Like… sit-there-fuming kind of mad.

I think I need a break from League. As much as I want to log in and try again, it’s not healthy. I might channel that frustration into some dev work instead — or at least go see Lenny this weekend to help reset.

Also, I cleaned my garage. It was a very “treating the external chaos to help fix the internal chaos” kind of move. Felt good.

What’s Next?

Next week will be mostly spreadsheet work — fleshing out more items.
I’ll start with boss drop loot, since I’ve already begun that and can talk more about it next time. I’ve also sorted out the enemies and NPCs for levels 1 and 2, so I’ll finish formatting the items they drop or sell into the new system.

I’ve been wondering how to structure the item sheet:

• Do I sort by rarity?
• By level?
• Some other system?

I don’t want a Legendary item showing up as the third entry when it should clearly sit down the bottom with the other high-rarity stuff. So I’ll spend some time thinking about how to structure that cleanly.

Also — horse event next weekend, which should be good for the soul. And I’ve got a wedding coming up (not mine), so I need to buy something to wear. Thinking a navy dress, maybe with those flowy shoulder “cape” sleeves — not a literal cape, but the dramatic, wispy bits. I think that’d look sick. We’ll see.