Good evening!

Ever been interested in what exactly goes into the sound design of DATING OF THE FUTURE? Ever wanted to learn more about the game's fonts? Well, after covering some of the progress being made on Callie's route, I'll finally let you in on my dirty little secrets. This stays between us, okay?

ORANGE YOU GLAD I DIDN'T SAY DECAY? DECAY AND ENTROPY FOR AN ETERNITY?

DATING OF THE FUTURE's glorious climax, Callie's route, is well over half-way finished.

The writing process for this route has been going much smoother than past routes, likely owing to the fact that I'm finally starting to figure this "making a video game" shit out.

About time.

Going into writing the route though, I had concerns about how I would get the player to warm to a character like Callie, who is arguably the game's most unsociable character.

There's a certain sense throughout the game (one that I quite intentionally added) of aloofness to Callie. Characters seem to have variably messy histories with her, and the player's personal experience with her up until the beginning of her route can be described as somewhat difficult at worst, and curious at best. Where other dating-format visual novels tend to have their final or "hardest" route be with the supreme woman of the player's desires, DATING OF THE FUTURE has never been about giving people what they think they want, as much as showing people something they never even realised they wanted.

Callie is not supposed to be the idealised woman, as I hope none of my characters are. She is, however, a DEEPLY complex and intriguing character (or so I believe players will find her to be). I am certain that the emotional journey that Callie's route will take players on will be among DATING OF THE FUTURE's most compelling and interesting elements.

But... We shall see!

Or, you shall, at least. I can't watch you playing.

By the way, here's a pair of concept sketches for the next CG scene that I am due to illustrate.

You can find the uncensored version on my Twitter.

THE SOUND OF VICTORY

As the game's development comes closer to its end, so does the development of the game's soundtrack.

While I, myself, do not create the game's music (I leave that to our expert researchers and top scientists), I am in charge of the sound design for the game. That means anything from deciding what songs are needed for what scenes, to spending an hour on freesound.org trying to find the perfect sound for Vee dropping a manila envelope on a tiled floor.

It is often said (by me, right now) that video game sound design, much like film editing, is a silent art. When done well, you never notice it. When done poorly, you can immediately tell, even if you struggle to put your finger on what exactly has gone wrong. That last element--that it is sometimes hard to diagnose even an obvious problem--is what I feel can sometimes be the downfall of video game designers.

Sound design requires special attention that game designers (particularly indie developers) are often ill-equipped to notice. While I am no sound expert, I like believe that I make an effort to pay attention to what the game's audio might need to reach its maximum potential and truly elevate the game.

As such, I have a list of unofficial rules that guide my thoughts for sound design.

• Music should have impact. This isn't too much about the music itself, but about the way that the game uses it. Music can RADICALLY alter the tone of a scene, meaning that playing music becomes a decisive weapon in the fight for emotionally effective writing. No beating around the bush! I never put music on in the background when it isn't necessary for evoking specific emotions. No music in the game is simply "background music".
• Music is a time capsule. Like marinading food, music seems to absorb the emotions that surround it. It can even bring those feelings back years after the last listen (again, much like marinaded food). Visual novels can be highly emotionally compelling, which seems to infuse their soundtracks with a special sort of emotional magic. The goal, for me, is to maximise this effect. Specific songs are associated with specific characters, or topics of conversation, or locations. Re-using music becomes a deliberate act of emotional re-enforcement, rather than simple re-use. This might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how often this sort of musical decisiveness is ignored.
• Silence is not the enemy. Since the game's music is so bold, and is utilised in a fittingly bold manner, a lack of music can become an equally powerful element of the game. Silence creates expectations, builds tension, and holds focus.
• Music is obvious, but ambience is subtle. You may have noticed that the game has ambient environmental sounds. Birdsong, distant flowing water, rain, and other ambient effects can be subtle cues to the subconscious about the nature of the world that the player is in. Ambience brings environments alive, even if it's not immediately obvious. This is especially useful in visual novels, where there is a limited ability to show whole, physical environments.
• Details matter. The ambient birdsong in DATING OF THE FUTURE is recorded from British birds. The train sound effects are exclusively recorded from the London Underground. Different doors composed of different materials make different noises when opened. In a game where sounds are often quite realistic, they have the ability to give quite profound information about the world that they claim to portray.
• User interfaces live and die on sound effects. If you've ever played a game and have felt that the menus feel slightly wrong or lacking, there is a very good chance that the implementation of satisfying sound effects could go a long way to solve the problem. Menus are all about interactive responsiveness, and as a game designer it is important to provide substantial sensory feedback for such interactivity. A menu lacking good sound design can make its use feel like a chore, as the game fails to reward the player for interaction. Note that this can apply to visual feedback, too.

There are many more rules than just these, but these are certainly among the most interesting. The rest is all easy shit like "Don't make SE too sudden or loud".

There really is something quite difficult to describe about the feeling of exploring something new in a visual novel; whether it be learning about a new character, or seeing a new environment. Their nature as heavily narrative-based interactive fiction I believe creates a unique sort of bond between audience and art that neither traditional video games nor literature can quite replicate. I believe that some significant part of this is their use of audio.

Well, that's all the unsourced conjecture you're getting from me on this topic today!

NOW THAT'S MY TYPE OF FONT

Have you ever noticed DATING OF THE FUTURE's fonts?

I edited them maybe a week ago, just for some subtle kerning changes. Regardless, it got me thinking back on their origins.

The larger font, "Crimson City" is used for everything from character dialogue to menus. The second, "Timekeeper", is almost totally reserved for small UI text, with the occasional feature as small character dialogue.

I designed the fonts just over a year ago, specifically for use in DATING OF THE FUTURE. Their story begun as most fonts' stories do--replacing other fonts that were just sort of shit.

(Depicted above: the old fonts.)

Alright, it's a little bit unfair to describe the fonts as "sort of shit". They were perfectly fine fonts that I'm very sure were quite adequate for the purposes that they were designed for.

The original larger font was one called VCR OSD Mono, if I remember correctly. It was designed to imitate old-fashioned captions that one may see on a VCR recording of something. As you can see, the font has a certain... Um, "jauntiness" to it. There is a distinct and noticeable irregularity to the heights of letters. Additionally, letters have quite unpredictable shapes (notice that the loops in the letter "d" matches the arch in the letter "h", but not the letter "p"), and ASBURDLY wide spaces between words.

In a visual novel, readability is arguably the single most important quality of the main font. The goal, for me, is to have a font that feels actively rewarding to slide your eyes over.

(Depicted above: the new fonts.)

The font that replaced VCR OSD Mono was, naturally, Crimson City.

Crimson City is marked by a distinctive conformity across its lettering; with arches and loops forming identical shapes, rigidity in letter height, and a clear diminishing of descenders. As an added bonus, the font contains some small design flairs here and there that make it closer resemble my handwriting, which features prominently in the game.

The story of the smaller font, Timekeeper, is related far less to the font that it replaced.

Timekeeper was designed to make menus more compact without sacrificing distant readability (notice how the original smaller font is quite hard to read). The thought, then, was to make it somehow both bold and slender at the same time.

My idea was to use a technique that I'm aware some fonts use (though I couldn't tell you what it's called), which is having vertical lines be thick, and horizontal lines thin. While this means that the font may end up quite wide, it at least prevents it from being tall as well; allowing it to fit into small gaps in menus.

The resulting font bore a passing resemblance to a specific font infrequently used in the 2011 remake of Sonic the Hedgehog CD (Notice the little "Delete" and "Back" buttons).

Or at least it sort of resembled it, before further edits made the fonts look nothing alike. Either way, I named it Timekeeper, after G-Mixer's remix of Quartz Quadrant JPN from the highly obscure 2013 Sonic CD fan remix album Temporal Duality. Also, the name seemed fitting for a game about the future...

Sorry if you're not a Sonic CD-head like I am. Sounds like a you problem.

The fonts would have been absolutely impossible to make without the help of YellowAfterlife's absolutely incredible Pixel Font Converter. As a general rule, fonts are a pain in the arse to make. Pixel fonts specifically have a lot of compatibility issues.

It's sort of a miracle that Ren'Py had no issue rendering my fonts, though that may just be because of the brilliance of the Pixel Font Converter.

CONCLUSION

If you can believe it, I did actually have much more to talk about than this. For the sake of brevity, though, it's probably best that I leave things at the font discussion and Sonic CD tangent. Maybe you'll hear all the other great things I had to say next month, assuming I remember them.

Probably not, though. It'll be some shit about how I organise my files, or something.

Callie's route is progressing much faster than expected, and before long I should hopefully have something that bears a passing resemblance to a complete game. Who knows!

I'm outta here!

-Marina