Welcome to the journey!

Hello everyone, and welcome! I'm Jjeinn, and I'm working on a series where I'm building a retro game inspired by games of the N64 and Play Station! It is under a working title of "Journey Through LoGuo" in the vein of Zelda and the like. Our protagonist, default name Locca, is going to make her way through the Empire of LoGuo, ruled by the sun emperor who as of yet does not have a name.

In her adventures through the lands, Locca will win the support of various scholars dedicated to the 6 elements, learning various spells to supplement her ever-increasing array of... gadgets? I feel that implies a higher tech than we're talking here. In the very-shoehorned reference to Journey to the Wes I have in my working title, there is a rather Chinese-inspired theme to LoGuo, which being my attempt at a N64-era "Zelda" esque game, directly created the name of the empire.

Contrary to most games I've seen of this genre, Locca is not your typical sword and shield fighter. Locca's weapon of choice is the guandao, a Chinese polarm sword, leading to a combat system that will be very active!

To me, this is basically a modern port of a hypothetical game made in a world where the video game crash didn't happen, and thus there was a US competitor to Nintendo that was attempting to match pace. So... "out of universe" but still in-universe somewhat, this is just what was the latest of a series in the 90's. To that end, there are certain things that would be known to players in this non-existent world that the game was made for, but we obviously don't have that context in real life. So, I have been going back and forth on whether to talk directly on that or not. If I do, I will mark such posts as #loguo spoilers

Other tags to follow the project are mainly going to be #loguo but I might add more.

This post will also eventually have the elemental symbols surrounding the crest of Loguo (basically mirroring the medallions around the triforce in OoT) but my pen tablet is angry currently. So hopefully soon.

And a link to my previous master post, about J'ard here:

J'ard is not dead, I've been working on the world for 8 years now, but it isn't the correct start. Thank you everyone who's followed along with my dev logs, and here we start some more!

The Unending Cycle

OK, so here's my first post of what amount to spoilers in reality, but are also kind of things that people in the imaginary world I am half-pretending this game was originally released in would know, as it is like... The third or fourth game in the series in that world, being the jump to 3D. As this is intended to be basically the OoT for the series, the narrative does stand on its own, and explains itself. But certain things, like Link being one of the people the Triforce is attuned to, were known to people who played earlier games, kind of. Even though OoT was also the earliest in the series at the time, my game definitely is not the first in the timeline of this nonexistent series of predecessors. This cycle has happened before. I will keep spoiler stuff hidden beneath a keep reading thing though, so anyone who doesn't want to know, like it's your first experience with the series like OoT basically was for me, don't bother I guess and wait until we actually get to like, plot stuff in the dev videos, I guess.

The Immortal Sun Emperor of Loguo

The so far unnamed Emperor of LoGuo is nearly as important a character as our heroine Locca. The Emperor is the sun, and as such, created the world, in all its splendor. In his world, he saw fit to make his glorious empire, and mainly occupies his time towards bringing magnificent projects into the world.

That actually leads nicely to his name, as I'm pretty sure I've decided. As I have mentioned every LoGuo post, as kind of a meta story of it, the game is from a world where the video game crash didn't happen, and thus there was an American company competing with Nintendo for a while (their console saga probably died around when Sega's did). But in their reality, this is like, at minimum the third game in the series, it's been going on since the 80's. And while a lot of their direction with the series is a love of East Asia, the world back then was less understanding of some things, and I kind of like the idea of the Emperor having a name that just means something about him, that doesn't necessarily work. So, while they absolutely do not speak any dialect of Chinese in LoGuo, I have become fond of the word ���高 (ZuiGao, sorry my keyboard won't let me properly write the tones here) as his name. It's basically just like, "supreme" or "highest." Like, he is the greatest, that's his thing. Now, my Mandarin is quite rusty, but I think that's probably not allowed as a normal name maybe? If so that kind of works better as like, a poor translation that sounded cool to the east asiaboo devs that hypothetically existed in the 80's. It also provides potential inspiration for the name of the series outside of my working title, Zuigao's Legacy. Just imagining having the cartridge in the console, and just the constant reminder that he is greater than you. This is his story. Like, that just feels quite perfect for him.

As I touched on in my post about Locca, he seems to have some sort of plan with her. She's his very special guest that he's ensured has a rather pleasant and "high class" life in a small spiritual village on a mountain well outside the capital. She occasionally is invited to feasts and the like, and he is a gracious host. He makes an effort to introduce her to the "important people" of the various groups and cultures within the empire, so she knows the leaders of each culture (vaguely at least) even though she hasn't been to see each place (yet) as the empire is quite large. I suppose it's fitting that I am having difficulty referring to Zuigao without sidetracking how he relates to Locca, and then just her. She is the protagonist after all, but it's also a bit of that duality that pervades the setting. I'm going to have to do a spoiler post on that a bit soon.

Appearance-wise, while I have ideas for him, he's too early concept to even talk about, even though I completely side-stepped that with Locca as there's the very incomplete initial concept art that I still need to get to of her. Unfortunately, with Zuigao, every time I try to come up with anything to even start concepting towards, it just ends up basically Rengoku Kyoujurou from Kimetsu no Yaiba. Which, I definitely don't want that exactly, I'll figure something out eventually though.

Our Heroine, Locca

So, Journey Through Loguo stars the girl Locca. At the start of the game, she is 10 years old and has grown up in a rather unique (in universe) circumstance. On a mountain there is a small spiritual community, a simple little town "lead" by mystics. "Lead" is a bit of a strong word, as it implies things really happen there, it's out of the way, quiet and peaceful. By order of the Emperor, for reasons Locca is not privy to, she has grown up as a "special guest" of the village.

Locca receives teaching in various subjects, spiritual guidance, even getting to learn a few skills of her interest, and a mandatory self defense instruction, which others of her village do not necessarily get. In one of the few places I've taken inspiration from Japanese culture over Chinese for Loguo, Locca uses a "sword on a long stick" as that's a woman's weapon. Whereas in Japan that would be a naginata, here Locca directly uses a Guandao (as the word most likely to be familiar to English speakers, but in Chinese that's the 偃月刀 - YanYueDao - Reclining Moon Blade) which immediately puts her on different footing from most protagonists of games of this genre that I know of. It also does double-duty with the Solar/Lunar duality that the world follows, where lunar is feminine, thus of course she'd use a weapon associated with the moon.

[Insert initial concept picture of Locca that I still haven't gotten back to after fixing my pen tablet.]

So, with her directly being a single weapon with no shield or whatnot, I am planning on having a more... Active defense than games like this tend to have... I guess more comparable to Okami than Zelda, but that still feels wrong. My goal is to have a way to attack into their own attacks and foil them in the process, but not in a way that is just "swing nonstop no thought." Kind of replacing a block button with a defensive stance to work out of.

Oh, whoops, we got side tracked with game information in this post that was supposed to be about the main character of a game.

Locca, as the Emperor's special guest has travelled through a decent part of the empire, primarily to occasionally be a more direct guest in the palace itself. Try as she might, if anyone in her village does know the reasoning for her special treatment, none tell her, and she also is rather sheltered from current events in the empire. She knows the layout of course, the different peoples that live within it (a different group associated with each of the primary elements in the image I uploaded last Saturday) but recent history and the current situation is a mystery. So much to learn when her adventure actually starts.

In the alternate reality that I am half pretending this game is from, the reason why Locca is a special guest of the Emperor would be pretty obvious to people who have played previous games in the series that would have existed. So, whenever I do a post with that sort of spoiler, this is like top of the list of things to talk about. Until then, we'll build up to the first real dance of Loguo in our reality. Things about our Emperor soon

While this is a bit of a sidetrack from what I said I'd be posting about this week, I'm currently playing a game, and it's inspired accessibility ideas, and it's been a while since I've spoken on that subject. Or any, really.

So, I'm in this stealth section, and like, my hearing is not the best. I hear the footsteps of this guy that I'm hiding from in a locker, but I can't really tell if he's getting closer with his scary assault rifle or not.

The subtitles in this game are quite sparse, and it reminded me of Half-Life's lovely subtitles where you can have it inform you of sound effects, but for a stealth section like this, that wouldn't be entirely helpful. Like, I don't need to just know that there's footsteps, but how loud are they? Are they getting closer? Half-Life's system wouldn't tell me.

(Dies in the middle of the post, and once again needs to start this stealth section from the beginning. At least this time was auto-aim messing up my ambush of the guy with the assault rifle. My arrow hit a guiderail and he just shot me)

I feel like for subtitles of sound effects though, one thing you could do is just... Assign a number as a volume. So, maybe you have footsteps (5) and then the subtitle switches to footsteps (6) at some point and you know they're approaching! Or at least you can hear them better from your position. I do not think this is very useful for my current game project, but I will absolutely keep this in my pocket.

Forwards after mostly regaining power!

I got my tablet working again. So, of course, I have started working on the graphic I wanted in my pinned post. In the local culture, the Sun/Moon logo that definitely needs some fine tuning is roughly comparable to their equivalent of the taijitu (the yin-yang symbol) and has a... related philosophy where things are associated with either the solar, or the lunar side of the universe. As the emperor is the sun, solar associations tend to be seen as better culturally. That's not to say that the moon is bad necessarily, although more things with negative connotation fall there.

The 6 symbols here besides the Sun/Moon symbol that I need a name for represent the 6 primary elements, which you will be going around collecting the support of the lead sages of each element. If you know Chinese or Japanese you'll probably see some inspiration from the characters that mean what each of these elements are, but I specifically wanted to not use real language for these, LoGuo is not China. These are the only characters that exist of "LoGuoan" right now. The circle around the sun are the 5 traditional Chinese elements (Wuxing). From the top and clockwise, we have Water, Wood, Fire, Metal and Earth. And then alone on the top we have the element of Time which, like... Part of my idea for this game is it is like it was made by an American company in some alternate timeline where the video game crash didn't happen. The studio in addition to definitely being like... East-Asiaboos, absolutely made this game in response to OoT, and oh we need Locca to be an adult too. Hence quickly appending Time to tradition, or whatever. In the final "medallion" screen, I plan on Time kind of being... The background or something like that. I'm still tinkering with this and this was like, first pass, but I really wanted to actually make a post.

Later in the week, I'm going to be making a post about our heroine Locca, and the Emperor, who I think I have a name for but that goes with explanation and this post is already hella rambly.

Ah, well here we are, getting hit by a category of storm that I'd never even heard of before yesterday. Power is out, so my plans for getting my drawing tablet working and working on my video sure are delayed....

I hope things get better soon.

Moving Forward

Wow, March. Maybe I spoke a bit early on the whole "Apocalypse Averted" thing. Just, things didn't pan out like it looked like. That post was accurate though, I still have a home (...Rent an apartment at least) so that is a better situation than I was anticipating at the start of the year.

So, where are we? I've been sick, and almost recovered enough to be able to record again, for the first time? And things are actually looking pretty good moving forward. I actually was about to have an opportunity to record last Thursday, but I was watching a video on the dumbest patents in gaming, seeing that Nintendo has Z-Targeting patented. Now, lock on is a thing in all sorts of games, but it had me thinking... I'm making a retro take on what those games were for me. My plan for the first episode was twofold:

Now, the first part was where my concern was after thinking about patents. I wanted to replicate the old 3D Zelda "Run past a ledge to auto-jump" sort of system. But, in all the games of the... Like, puzzle dungeon adventure thing... I don't know what to actually call that genre... I've never seen anyone else do that type of movement, which has me nervous that Nintendo has successfully patented that. Which, really had me wondering, do I change up my controls entirely? Especially with the whole... Palworld thing... I cannot fight Nintendo. As much of an inspiration they've been to me, defining so much of my idea of what is a video game, I really must be... Intelligent about this.

So, again, where are we? Context button is going to jump in appropriate circumstances. Yes, I'm still planning on Journey Through LoGuo as my project for video. It really is ideal for that. Actually releasing it... That will take more research. At minimum it's exposure, but I can't pay rent with exposure, so there's a lot of unknowns. But I cannot keep being idle. I need to throw something into the wind.

I'll be updating my pinned post in the week here sometime, with some more information on the actual current project, and yeah... Hopefully video soon actually. I don't see anything on the horizon here that could actually prevent it now.

For anyone still around, thank you for being around. I know there was a lot of excitement about J'ard, and it's not buried in the ground but... There are realities of scale that I need to actually respect in game design. Pulsonic Dreams was definitely within the size of game that I've made before, but J'ardscape is kind of far and away above it. It's not dead, but too involved to really spend everything on right now. Journey Through LoGuo is also bigger than anything I've ever made, but in a way that is manageable.

Apocalypse... Averted?

So, I had March 23rd listed in my calendar as "Apocalypse Commences" which seems to be cancelled at this point. So, good news for me actually getting to do the series I've announced. It started with the 22nd kind of having a disaster, which stopped part of the apocalypse, and then over the week the dominoes from that landed in a way that "Oh yes, I'm definitely getting to stay living in my current residence" which was kind of up in the air until, um, Thursday I think?

There's still a bit of settling down that needs to happen, but my cough is finally going down (It's been months) and I am getting nights to myself again. It's looking like soon is an accurate description for the first Journey Through Loguo dev video!

Honestly, I really need to find a better name than the working title. Like, yeah, referencing Journey to the West for a Zelda clone with a more Chinese theming than the European of Zelda is fun for a working title. But like, "The Legend of Zelda" has such a kick to it in its simplicity. And my primary audience is English speaking and probably doesn't exactly have a sure idea on how to pronounce Loguo. But I have a single character name decided so far, and I don't know if I really want to copy the template of LoZ's name anyways. Besides, Legend of Locca is a definite "no" because like, while I enjoy the sound it really doesn't have a shortened form that would be good to use, LoL is kind of already in use. Is that even something to worry about with a little indy project? Kind of, but like, in a "kind of aiming high there, aren't you?" sort of way.

Recovering Life

Hey everyone, it's been a while. Around mid-October I announced my getting started on recording. And to be fair, I did get everything set up that day for it. Everything was ready to go, got my N64 controller hooked up to my computer, as Journey Through Loguo is honestly going to be built to be playable on one, although of course supporting controllers made this century!

However, what really caused this new direction in my game development (which, coincidentally, it turns out I made the first post on it in August when this all started I had no idea I was remapping so quickly) is basically life collapse. Since August, things have not been good, and honestly getting worse as it's gone on. My social life basically fell apart in August, and then as time has gone on, deaths in the family, losing my social circle at work, work *incoherent gesturing*, being bedridden for half of a month over the last two, and losing a roommate so like, how do rent?

Throughout February though, and more so now, I've felt I've finally caught a foothold and can actually start doing things again. This month is currently frantic preparation for a new roommate if we find one, but when that calms down, and I have an evening to myself, I am making my video.

I haven't spoken about it much, because honestly I haven't had time, but I have continued to learn more about Godot, mostly idle tinkering as I get ready for work. Have I mastered it? Of course not, it's been... Ugh, 7-ish months of light tinkering. But I in theory know how to do everything I plan to do with Journey Through Loguo presently.

I wanted to throw the concept art I've been doing of our protagonist, Locca, into this announcement. But in addition to the lack of time, I've only been like, halfway into the art headspace at best here, so she's just rough lineart that only kind of shows a vague idea. I'm not going to put any of that out until like, I have a face at least that is more than "outlines of eyes, nose is here, here's a mouth." I was always planning on having her concept art done after the first video anyways, because she's just going to be a little capsule at the beginning as I build the "move through the world" parts of the code first.

So, video hopefully in April, finally. Sorry for my absence, I really appreciate all the support I've received on here over the years.

Recording Onwards!

So, I have the apartment to myself, and I have learned Godot enough to start my dev vlog series on the Journey through Loguo, as I guess I'll call it for now still. I work tomorrow, so I am not entirely sure that I can finish recording tonight, but we'll see where I get!

For my first session, beyond talking a bit about the various free engines around for people to pick (only very briefly!), I am planning on basically setting up the basic N64 Zelda controls, primarily focused on getting the context button working. I have ideas for that and it shouldn't be too hard, honestly. So yeah, I think I have a shot at finishing tonight, at least.

Godot Tutorials Complete

I have finished the tutorials for Godot, and I am very happy with some of the utility that is already obvious to me here!

Honestly, the only thing I am currently "missing" from Unity is the whole "animation layer" system. It was nice to be able to have multiple animations playing for an entity at once in J'ardscape, so that the arms and legs could be up to different things. Also those blend trees so it seemlessly shifts between running and walking... So far I haven't seen an obvious way for that to happen in Godot, but the 3D tutorial wasn't exactly all that involved with regards to animation.

While that'll mostly be important to figure out with when I inevitably port J'ardscape over to Godot, it is something that I would like for my video devlog project. Like, the idea is that it's a theoretical N64-era game, sure, but... The best part of retro-design is taking the nice things that you remember about those old games, but being able to skirt a bit on the exact limitations. Like, I think animation bones weren't quite a thing yet, but I am sure animating Locca with them...

But like, blending animations wasn't really a thing back then, I think, so like... If I want Locca to put her weapon away while moving, I suppose I can make a unique animation for that as opposed to scripting an extra animation to override her arms or something? But we'll see as I dive in further.

And yes, name drop of our little protagonist for the not-Ocarina of Time, currently being called "Journey to Loguo" I guess. I look forward to making our first dev video where she almost assuredly will just be a little gray capsule.

So, I've been getting into the signals in my little practice projects in Godot, and there's so much potential there. I'm really excited about this! Although I wish I'd downloaded the Godot version that allows C#, I should probably download that one at some point.