A Random Squid

Starting the front end of the creation pipeline
Added error handling

Ugly front end codes makes beautiful front end pages...
The forms and states are killing me.

Finished the vibe extractor and gallery pages

Pain of front-end :
1. Using other people's library and getting error despite following the guide (syntax highlighting library)
2. CSS, even if it's tailwind. I sucks at designing
3. Finding the right words, the right spacing, the right design, the right color (UI/UX development)

I created some pages and some protected pages
Pain...

Frontend is a pain.
It's really painful to one by one, organize the elements into the right place.
And one by one, find a color and design that fit the element.
This is the best landing page I've done. And I saw that it was good.

Finish all the prompt engineering (AI side), added tests, authentication, protected api, and starting on the database

Prompt engineered and created the api end point for Narrative-generation (generate a full narrative from log lines), Algorithm-suggestion (Suggest algorithms from a list that might match the narrative) and Algorithm-diversification (create twists on traditional algorithms)

Prompt engineering is hard in its own way...

Prompt engineered the second and third prompt and their api end point. Theme-ideation will creatively generate themes. Logline-expansion will take the theme and expand it into a workable story.

I really would want to solve a problem that has a logline of A clumsy but determined gumshoe wants to trace the culprit's escape route, but the Crime-Solving Dance Floor, in its infinite wisdom and glowing glory, only illuminates the path of the guilty when you perfectly traverse a sequence of glowing tiles, but each tile has a specific 'groove coefficient' that changes based on your last step and the ambient disco ball rotation and the phase of the moon and your breakfast cereal choice, so you've got to find the optimal path through this labyrinth of light and sound, or you'll just end up doing the cha-cha in circles and probably tripping over your own feet.

AI, when you prompt it right, can get very weird.

Prompt engineering is goated.

Designed the basic prompt chaining that will give me the result I want.
Created the first prompt + api endpoint for the prompt Vibe-extraction to extract the vibes of a sample text to use as a basis for writing the problem

Why won't the white spaces and new lines render...?
Hello? Website?

I'm shipping now. Wish the best of luck for me.

Finishing touches and RELEASE!

Well, it's been 2 months since I started this, and I underestimate how much time is needed to create RPG game...

Even though it's only 2 towns and 1 route, I hope you all can enjoy this while it lasts!

The game itself is unfinished, but I believe that the systems you need to create a good RPG game is all there. (I guess)

And before I move on to other projects, I want to reflect on AI one last time. If you followed my devlogs, you probably have seen a lot of my moments hating on it, and I think the AI deserves all my hates...
However, AI really helps sometimes.

Good AI:
-When I need to edit something that has an effect on existing codes. I can just TAB and cursor will edit the existing codes for me without me needing to scroll and type it all one by one.
-When I need to create a lot of things that are simple, but a little different from each other. I can't just copy and paste, so I can let AI handle the changes.
-When I don't know the language. Its suggestion helps me a lot with the syntax.

Bad AI:
-Finding problems and bugs in codes is horrible with AI's help. It just CANNOT grasp the workings of my code. Even if it's GEMINI 2.5 with long context window, it still doesn't understand and it always fix something that's not the problem.
-UI design. It can't see with its eyes, so it's just bad at it. (But even if I sent the image, it's still bad...) If I were to code without seeing the design, I would be just as bad.
-Story writing... Everything looks dead and the same. I let it write the dialogues of every NPC as a starter template and then I go edit them, but almost all of the NPC's dialogues are just terrible and soulless...

And that's it...🫠🫠🫠
Goodbye, organic chemistry.
Goodbye, pokemon.
I'm going to do something new now.🫠🫠🫠

NPC and dialogues inside the buildings

• having a fight with the code formatter in my IDE for messing up my code format and making everything unreadable (waste so much time)

Added the second town intro, NPC, and objects
How do I deploy a game like this again?
Itch.io?
The new semester is near, and I don't have much time left.

Added the quiz for route 1 and the library for basic functional groups overview.
Added the quiz template for cutscenes.
Added the pokeball item gain functionality.
The first town + route 1 is 100% done YEAH!

I do feel like my brain cells are dying constantly when creating the dialogues.

Added the cutscene for the second house.
The story is ready to move to the big town...
IT'S SO TIME-CONSUMING TO CREATE A STORY... AH...

I don't even know when I will finish this when 1 cutscene takes hours to finish...

I guess I will need to ship it once the first town and route 1 is done, and we can start having synthesis battles for once.

Creating RPG game is very time-consuming.

Writing dialogues take a longggggggggg time
I let one of my friend play test my first two dialogues and they said it's hard to distinguish characters...
So I create a new dialogue box that change colors and show the speaker directly.

AI is great for repetitive tasks, but it's probably worse than my friend who has just picked up programming yesterday if it's dealing with a task with any kind of real complexity.

There is a bug with my new changeFocus cameraAction. The intended behavior is moving the camera focus from one character to another smoothly.

The bug is that the camera position will flash to the target position for 1 frame before returning to the original position and actually starting the camera movement

Claude confidently said it's the problem with setting camera position and it fixed it by SETTING THE POSITION TO THE TARGET POSITION BEFORE MOVING IT TO THAT SAME TARGET POSITION, giving an instant movement.

Gemini confidently said it's the problem with setting camera position and it fixed it by GETTING THE CAMERA POSITION and SETTING THE POSITION TO ITS OWN POSITION, giving... nothing. The camera is already at that position when it sets it.

And then, the AI is frustrated.

And then, the AI is FOCUSING INTENTLY on my debug log.

And the final solution of the AI is FORCING THE CAMERA TO FOCUS ON THE PLAYER WHENEVER I ENTER CUTSCENE

I hate it.
If someone's thinking AI will replace developers soon, please consider this stupidity and be confident in your skill.

Added the first cutscene.
I like writing cutscenes dialogues, but it's such a chore setting everything up :(
Fixed the bug with NPC and player rendering
Generated developer mode console using AI. This is probably the first time AI has done anything right the first time.

Added floating molecules in title page, credit page, more NPC AI, more NPC sprites, elevators, and cutscene templates

Added interiors and transition points for the first 2 towns
(Kinda sad that I work mostly on the tile map editor program Tiled now, and my time working[not really coding, but working], doesn't get recorded in Hackatime)

Add jumping and directional collision

Finally fixed this hideous unsightly ugly disgusting bug.
AI contributes nothing but pain towards my solution.
Please just use debugger first and not waste your time...

Did a lot of little stuffs like player sinking in grass, grass sound, and tile loading optimization

Made an autotile -> terrain tile converter.
The asset inside autotiles folder isn't compatible with terrain painter in tiled tilemap editor, so I made a converter for it.

(i couldn't figure out how to make it work in the program, so I spent hours converting it...)

I made a mistake with Git and almost lost my work because I tried to correct my misspelling of combine -> combind

Finished combining DialogueState into CutsceneState

Added Emotes and many more cutsceneActions I can program into the cutscenes.

Right now, I'm trying to combine DialogueState into CutsceneState, since Cutscene already have the functionality of displaying dialogues and dialogue options. But to do that, I need to add the INTERACT key press detection for the cutscene loading.

I also spent this entire afternoon playing Pokemon Rejuvenation up until 1st poison gym, and I have a feeling that I need to rethink the entire difficulty curve and gameplay mechanic to make it more fun...

The key element that makes the game fun is actually planning about how to beat an opponent who seems impossible the first try. But with my current system, you can't really level up or customize as much as I want.

Added a system where you can change map by just walking through the map edge, without needing to transition through black screen and warping.

Starting the actual map design with Tiled map editor program.

Added Pokedex page where you can view Reactions and Molecules information.
You can also customize your personal deck in this page.