Hey champs! BaraJam 2021 is over and Build 0.5 is here! This build adds a new character, reveals new details about Jayden and Hardy, and adds sex scenes! I hope you enjoy the new content. In light of this new build, I'd like to reflect back on the making of this VN. A midmortem if you will, since the VN isn't finished yet.

Before that, make sure to check out Dwarven Destiny's itch.io page! I worked on the character designs and the sprites for the game. As of this writing, they don't have a demo up, but they should have one up a day after this DevLog gets published. Check it out here: https://gryphbear.itch.io/dwarven-destiny, and also make sure to follow Gryph here:https://itch.io/profile/gryphbear. Anyways, onto the DevLog.

All In Love And War came about due to several things. When I was in high school, I always wanted to make my own RPG. I was a big fan of the Fire Emblem and Xenoblade games, so I wanted to make a game even better than those games. This RPG would be better than all the other RPGs by having hot men you can date and hilarious women who would cheer you on. At the time, I would always dream of big things, without actually doing anything to achieve them. I had a huge scope for the RPG, but I never did anything to actually develop it. Over time, that idea evolved where the protagonist and his love interest were Marines. I can't tell you why I wanted them to be Marines specifically, but I did want them to be in an environment that allowed them to be in the same location together, and also put them in life-threatening situations to allow for potential drama. In hindsight, I probably should have gone for something that A. wasn't something many leftists (most of my audience) were against, and B. wasn't so difficult to research. But there were a lot of gay people online who thought that men in the military were sexy, so I stuck with it. Anyways, it was going to have a big backstory where the protagonist slept with many men, but it wasn't until the midpoint of the game proper where he realized his true love was the hot guy who thinks a threesome is a one-way ticket to hell. Then I realized that the backstory was interesting enough to turn into its own game, and so I made it into a Dating Sim. Then I realized that an RPG sequel to a Dating Sim is kinda trite, so I scrapped the original RPG idea and focused more on the Dating Sim. I might go back to the RPG idea later on, but not now.

Now, the Dating Sim was originally going to be the first project I was going to work on. I worked on the characters' routes, their character designs, some important scenes, and I even paid for some assets of the game. However I showed this to a friend of mine, who's my art and writing messiah, and he told me that the scope of this Dating Sim was way too big for someone who had never published a story before, let alone someone who had never published a VN before. I was shocked, as I thought it was the smaller project I'd work on before moving onto something bigger, ("I mean, I'm totz going to work on that super sexy RPG right after I finish the Dating Sim and get a gazillion fans, duh!") but he convinced me that I should work on something much smaller before I tackle something as big as a Dating Sim. So I decided to make a VN on one of the character's backstory, so I can garner interest in the Dating Sim by virtue of that character. This character's backstory was best suited for a small VN over all the other characters' backstories for various reasons. His backstory was short, it had a clear three-act structure, it was the most interesting, wouldn't spoil any of the routes, and, most importantly, his backstory allowed me to draw gay sex scenes.

Back when I still had that RPG idea, and before I thought of the Dating Sim project, this character was more of an afterthought. His entire role was to cheer up the protagonist when he had gone through something terrible and give him wise advice. Basically every mentor character you've met except without all the dying. However, at one point I got really into the "Daddy Mentor'' character as I like to call them. Older characters that were both mature and sexy. The type of person you'd love to have a cup of coffee with. I decided to make this character more developed and resemble that Daddy Mentor character. And that's how Jayden Jones was created.

You thought I was going to say Hardy, weren't you? Well, All In Love And War is about Jayden's younger years before he became a daddy, isn't that wonderful? But now that you know that this is actually a prequel to a project I'm going to work on in the future, I hope you look forward to the expansion of the elements in All In Love And War and see how they fit together whenever I get that Dating Sim project up and running. For example, if you like Mr. Mahmud, then expect to see him in a much larger role in this future project of mine. But if you don't like him, then there will be a variety of other characters you can expect to see and maybe fall in love with.

And now let's talk about stuff I learned during this Jam. The original plan was that I would finish the story by the time December rolled around, and finish the art later. I wanted to do this specifically because I thought people would be able to digest the ending better if they read the whole story in one go, instead of in chunks. While I could have done that, I made a few bad judgments and I ended up making about one-half to second-thirds of the content so far. One of the things that slowed down development was that I made an early build on Veteran's Day (Actually Nov 10 because that's the birthday of the Marines). I thought, "Hey, I should release a build of this VN about Marines on this particular day because surely that would be cool and might get the attention of some Marines." That was utterly pointless and made me prematurely finish the art when I could have used the time to write further within the script. The response from releasing my first VN was also overwhelming for me as I kept on getting all this feedback and I wanted to just suck it all in. All the dopamine I got from seeing so many people follow me made me unmotivated to work on the VN. I told myself I should have just withheld releasing a build until the end of November so I would have been more motivated to get that dopamine release and just have all the time in the world to absorb it all. I probably wouldn't have finished the story even then, however, and the feedback I got from surveys and comments was helpful. I cannot stress this enough, your feedback is really important to me. 

Creating the 0.5 build also made me move around my schedule a lot. I had to move aside some fun time in order to work on the VN. I still had school to worry about, but I micromanaged my classes and saw what work I really had to focus on versus what I could just blaze through. It was one of the few times where I had to really plan out what I had to do during those two months. It taught me a lot about time management and what I should just stop doing. It revealed what habits were holding me back and gave me a call to action to do something about them. Creating the VN also taught me to plan things more out thoroughly next time. For example, I wanted the game to have an 80s anime art style. I wanted it to look like the original Macross and Gundam. That meant that I wouldn't have any occulant occlusion, I would only have cel-shading only, and I would have detailed eyes. The problem with that is that my art style doesn't really look like either of those anime shows. I don't think anyone looked at All In Love And War and said, yup that looks just like an 80s anime. Because of this, my art ended up suffering because I purposely limited myself without actually replicating the artstyle properly, so the art just ends up looking lazy. Most people liked my art from what I saw from the surveys, but I still wish to give better direction to my art. This Jam also taught me that the most important thing was that I got words on the page, over anything else. Forcing myself to write out the story even though I didn't want to was a big help. I was able to see what worked and what didn't work. It makes the editing process that much easier, as I can just edit things to make stuff in the story to be more streamlined and more cohesive. 

I mentioned before that I was a dreamer when I was in high school, and I still am to some extent. It was in 2019, however, when I decided to become serious with my art. During that time, I made art like this:

I showed my art to people and at first, they were kind to me. They knew I was a beginner artist and wanted to help me improve. By the end of 2019, however, I barely made any progress as an artist, and they made more blunt criticisms about my art. They hurt like hell, but without those, I wouldn't have improved the way I have if I didn't receive that helpful advice. By 2020, however, I became addicted to getting that advice, and I would rely on that advice in order to improve. That's when my "messiah" friend told me to shut the fuck up and actually learn the stuff to improve. He was harsh, but he knew what was best for me. I didn't want to be that fuck-up who never got to make anything good in their life. So I got my act sort of together and actually did everything I could to improve. I'm still not an amazing artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to believe that I did in fact improve my art skills from 2019 to now. I'll keep on improving my art and writing skills, and I will seek out any feedback I can to make sure I can be both a writer and an artist that people will love. I might be a little over-dramatic here, but it's still true I do want to improve. I also want to prove to people that I can, in fact, make something good. I see people give positive feedback on All In Love And War, and while there are flaws in it, it confirms that I can make something that people can enjoy.

Overall these past two months have been a valuable experience for me, and I hope you guys look forward to what I have in store later. When the full story is revealed, I'll talk about some other development things. I don't know when the next build will be released, but it shouldn't take long. I will say that I am exhausted at this point, and so I want to take a break from working on the VN. I have to study for finals and have to deal with a whole shit ton of stuff. For now, thanks for reading all of this. This is quite scattered because I'm just blurting out my thoughts on all this. Hope you'll enjoy what I have in store for you.