Busty Barrister - Finishing Level One

Try out the latest build.

I started working on Busty Barrister Barbara on November 17 2023. Just over one month ago. The game not done, and it probably wont be done for at least another three months. Game development is very different to business application development. When I made BankStatementConverter I coded it for a week, and got it into production. I spent the next three years improving it.

You can’t really do that for a visual novel, gamers want to play the game when it’s done, not when it’s full of bugs and temporary art. But I want to get people playing it as soon as possible. That’s why I’ve been making web builds. It is difficult ot get someone to run your exe. It’s easier to get someone to click a link and play your game.

So my plan is to get the first level done, to a very high quality and then get people to play that. Once that’s done I’ll continue to build the next levels and also let people pre-order the rest of the game. In this blog post I’m going to write out what I need to do to get the first level of Busty Barrister Barbara done.

1. Hiring Artsits

I am not good at drawing, see Get Rich or Die Gaming, so I’ll need to hire people to draw characters and background images. I’d like the characters to be animated as well so I’m going to hire an animation studio to do that. Back in 2013 I worked with Emot Toons and they were really great. I plan to work with them again for Busty Barrister Barbara.

I’d like the game to be fully voice acted. Once I finish writing the script for level one I’ll put up casting calls on Casting Call Club.

2. Specify Work for Artists

The character and background artists need to know exactly what I want them to draw. I can put out a job ad before specifying the work, but once I hire someone I’ll need to hand them a spec.

The animators can’t really work until they have some character art.

I can put out casting calls for voice actors with just a few lines of dialog. Once I hire someone I’ll need the full script finished though.

3. Writing

The script for level one is almost done. I’ve written 2300 words and I have the structure for what happens. I need to write out a few sections. I should break up the writing into tasks like:

[ ] Finish Jared Testimony #3
[ ] Write present evidence fail dialog
[ ] Write press testimony dialog for Korshal Testimony #1

A lot of other tasks depend on this. I need to stop writing coding and finish writing dialog.

4. Coding

There’s probably a lot of bits and pieces to code. Here are the big things that remain.

Joining Scenes Together

The game is really a series of cutscenes joined together with some point-and-click adventure segments as well. At the moment the engine can only play one cutscene. I need to write code that allows one cutscene to start after another ends. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

Press Witness During Testimony

In the testimony state you can press a witness on something they’ve said. Not too hard to implement, but it’s something that’s missing.

Present Evidence During Testimony

You can also present evidence that contradicts what a witness has said.

5. Data Entry

I’m writing the story in Google Drive.

The actual level data is a C file. I need to manually type up the script into level data. This is a bit tedious but someone’s got to do it. In the future I’ll probably create a level data format and some sort of tool so that other people can do it for me. For the first level I’m going the scripts will be C files.

High Level Tasks

[ ] Hire a background artist
[ ] Hire a character artist
[ ] Hire character animators
[ ] Hire voice actors
[ ] Specify background art
[ ] Specify character art
[ ] Finish writing level one
[ ] Code links between scenes
[ ] Code press testimony function
[ ] Code present evidence function
[ ] Enter data for level one

Hopefully in a week’s time I’ll have some of these high level tasks completed.