nts2024 - developer notes from emil

More notes to be added later... probably...

Adaptive/Dynamic/Variable/idk Music is very cool

• If you haven't noticed already, the gameplay music is adaptive. It started off as me not liking how the music had the same lively beat for the entire level. Especially during the nighttime segment at the end, where there are few customers and Nicole's supposedly pretty tired from working all day. It wasn't a vibe. So a variable mix was the next best thing.
• I'd say the most difficult part of implementing adaptive music was trying to figure out when stuff should get louder or quieter. With how this game uses it (i.e., progressive instrumentation), I think it works best when the changes are subtle, or at least not too 'in your face' about it.
• I believe Celeste uses a similar progressive instrumentation in some of it's levels too. So that's neat.

Art, Part 1

• Since Scratch's pen layer is always at the back of everything, it can easily be covered by other sprites. These limitations weren't actually that hard to deal with given the layout of the game. I basically just had to allocate all the background elements to the backdrop sprite and foreground elements to another sprite.
• perspective art is my dispassion :,)

"Stylistic Suck" Elements (Art, Part 2)

• Regarding the coffee cup jpeg: It was originally a placeholder image, but I decided to leave it in cause why not. The same can pretty much be said for the weird meeple customers and their emoticon faces :p
• The game got this vague 'stylistic suck' vibe as a result. Which was mostly unintentional, but welcomed. It's also why I used Comic Sans everywhere. I found it pretty funny.