The Restaurant: Side B - Devlog #13

Hello everyone! Here's my current progress!

Main Missions:
Zoey: 1,144
Valeria: 1,052

Sidequests:
Valeria: 124
Zoey: 108

Locations:
Valeria: 75
Zoey: 69 🙏

Secrets: 89
New Songs: 14

Animations: 87 (We're only halfway through Zoey's main mission, so I'm guessing we'll end up with at least 250 animations!)

Total Renders: 2,661

Coding / Script: 1%

I literally just started working on the coding and script today! I've already fixed three minor issues, and by the time you're reading this post, I'll probably be writing the script. So wish me luck, guys!

Roadmap

For the next 2-3 weeks, I'll be fully focused on Zoey's main mission, going through everything carefully and making sure the dialogue and scenes are as good as I can possibly make them.

Once that's finished, I'll immediately move on to Valeria's main mission, which will probably take roughly the same amount of time.

Sidequests: These are relatively short, so I expect to finish them within a week or possibly even less. Of course, I'll make sure they're just as polished as the main missions.

Once all the scripts are finished and I'm completely satisfied with them, I'll start creating the voice clips for the characters.

After that, I'll move on to adding sound effects and music throughout the game to make everything feel more lively, immersive, and interactive.

This is a VERY big workload, but once these steps are completed, I'll focus on fixing the remaining issues, improving gameplay, adding more locations, and updating the UI.

I'm planning to give each character their own personalized UI style. The overall layout and functionality will remain mostly the same, but the textures, visual effects, and general atmosphere will change depending on the character.

After all that, we'll finally move on to testing the game.

Current Problems & Expenses

Guys, I'm dealing with a LOT of expenses at the moment.

Between VS Code (Claude), workstation rentals, animation production, sound editing, music, Photoshop, and all the other smaller tools and services I use, the costs are really starting to pile up.

I'm trying my best to manage everything, but the next two months are going to be especially difficult financially.

I really want to get through these next couple of months without having to slow down development.

I hate asking for support, but I genuinely need your help right now, guys. Your support over the next two months is extremely important, and it would make a huge difference in helping me keep everything moving.

Improvements: A New UI Experience!

I actually think the game's current UI and menus already look pretty good, but I want to take things a step further and make them much more interesting and personalized.

The idea is to give each character their own unique UI atmosphere.

For example:

Zoey: When you select Zoey, the UI will switch to a style that better reflects her personality. The other menus will also adapt to match her theme.

Valeria (80s): When you select Valeria's 80s storyline, the menus will take on a more retro VHS-inspired appearance, with analog textures, VHS static, and subtle glitch animations.

Don't worry, the glitch effects won't be too distracting! They'll be subtle enough to add atmosphere without becoming annoying.

Valeria (Present Day): Her UI will have more of a restaurant-inspired theme, but I can definitely personalize it further to make it feel unique to her.

I'll also be making smaller adjustments to personalize each character's menus even further.

I'll share some example images below so you can get a better idea of what I'm going for.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not planning to completely rebuild the UI from scratch. The general layout will remain familiar, but the textures, styles, effects, and overall presentation will be improved and personalized for each character.

Final Words

The next two months are going to be an absolute warzone for me, and I'll have to push through it somehow.

I really want to give you guys something special, something that's genuinely worth the wait. I just hope I can pull it off.

A huge thanks to everyone who's been helping me throughout this journey. Even though I'm the one creating the main scenes and handling most of the development, I genuinely see the people helping me behind the scenes as the real MVPs.

And it's not just them. You guys are MVPs too. Without your support, I wouldn't have been able to make any of this happen in the first place.

Seriously, thank you, everyone. I appreciate every single one of you.

And before I go, I want to drop two more bangers for you!

Afterimage - Valeria & Melody's lore

Side A - Melody's lore

Hope you enjoy them!

Take care, everyone!