JORD BLOG

(The secret blog that you are not allowed to know about)

(Where Jordan talks about his game development)

(...but if you do know about it, I guess that means you're cool)

(I guess you can stay)

(...)

(but only for a minute!)

10/17/2025

WHAT HAVE I DONE??

Oh God, what have I done?... Let me tell you!

For a while now I have been working towards releasing a public demo. Most of what I am doing now is to serve that end. That was a huge part of the playtest, and now I have tons and tons that I want to add to the game, in large part due to player feedback. In my perfect world, I would have had the next playable version of the game out last month, but this isn't a dream... it's my nightmare :')

Just kidding, I actually really love working on Choppy Waters even though I still get burnt out.

Anyways, over the past 7-ish weeks here are some of the things that I have added to the game in an attempt to get me to closer to the demo version of the game!

AN ADAPTIVE SOUNDTRACK

I have been able to add an adaptive soundtrack to the game that I am very proud of personally! It is only a fraction of the music that I would like to put into the game, but for the demo I think I have just about all that I need.

This is a song from the soundtrack:

The adaptive aspect of the soundtrack comes in as you move across the map. Each location has it's own version of the above song with different instruments and other variations. When you arrive at a new location the soundtrack seamlessly switches between these different tracks. (The exception is the "battle music" which is it's own thing).

Initially, I tried to code my own adaptive soundtrack system, but it was bad :D (good thing no one is allowed to read this blog, otherwise this would be super embarrassing for me). Anyways, after that attempt I moved on to using FMOD, and holy hell, FMOD is amazing! I love it!

I will probably use it in all of my projects in the future, big and small. The tools it gives you for music and sound fx are so fun! Did you know that Untitled Goose Game uses FMOD?.... Well it does!... ISN'T THAT NEAT?!?

Here is a peak at what my soundtrack currently looks like in FMOD:

I had done some work in FL Studio (which I still use as my DAW) in the past for the soundtrack. I didn't end up using any of that old work, but I think the time I spent on it helped me go a lot faster than I otherwise would have.

It didn't take me too long to finish the soundtrack, so I was feeling pretty ahead of schedule :D ... LIKE A FOOL! >:(

TAKING A POTTERY CLASS

It was finally time to pay the pied piper. The most important part of any game development project, taking a pottery class. I took the pottery class and made a few cute but very amateurish "pots". It turned out to be a lot of fun, and less importantly I was able to add a ton of new sound effects to the game during this time.

One of my friends who took the pottery class with me, made what I consider to be the most perfect pot in the whole world, and gifted it to me!! :D

It turns out that if you hit the top of this pot with a cupped hand it makes a really satisfying "pop" sound. So recorded it and now it lives in the game in a few places as what might be some of my favorite sound effects in the game.

For the rest of the sound effects, I typically use foley packs made by Film Cow. (The guy who made the Charlie The Unicorn Youtube videos!) I mix and layer them using Audacity, and FL Studio, then import them to FMOD where I do a few more adjustments before syncing them up to different events & animations in the game.

(DO NOT ASK ME WHY I HAVE AN URGE TO HIT POTS >:( I WILL NOT BE UNPACKING THAT NOW OR EVER!)

Funny enough, I find creating and adding good sound effects to the game much harder than making the music for the game (Not something I would have expected). I was able to add a bunch of new sounds to the game that I am very happy with. I still have more that I want to add, even just for the demo version of the game, but for now I decided to move on and revisit the sound effects later.

MY LIFE IS A LIVING HELLSCAPE :')

I decided to refactor my codebase that handle all the abilities in my game.

After my playtest I had a ton of new ideas for abilities and features that I wanted to add to the game. In the end I had over 50 new ability ideas and that list keeps growing. I figured that it would probably take me less time to add all of these new abilities if I cleaned up my messy code base a bit.

My dreams are shattered, my life is in shambles, all is lost, and I have given up all hope...

...

Lol, just kidding. Refactoring did take FOREVER though! It probably would have been easier if my original ability system wasn't essentially just a huge "if then" statement, but oh well, there was nothing I could have done about that :) ... THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD HAVE DONE ABOUT THAT >:(

Maybe at some point I'll go into more technical detail about exactly what changes I made to the ability system, but my main goal was to follow SOLID principles and make the system easier to extend in the future, and I am happy to report that I think this goal has been met! And I was even able to squash some pesky bugs with certain abilities that I had struggled with in the past!

SOME OTHER STUFF!!!

This blog post is getting long, and I am getting tired, so I'll go through some of the other things that I have done with a list and some pictures!

A new scene to select a "starter deck"
Eight new "starter decks" for players to choose from
A redesigned "Sushi Mat" used to craft cards (for the sake of clarity)
Implemented new items that add passive effects and restrictions during sushi card creation
New Items that can either be used during combat or while crafting sushi cards
Many new ingredients and abilities for "starter decks" and sushi crafting
New visuals to support status effects on sushi and enemy cards
Many new sprites for Ingredients, "Items", and "Bobbles"

8/22/2025

HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE? GET OUT OF HERE! (Also I'm Making a Game)

WARNING : DO NOT READ THIS

No one should know about this blog! How did you get here??

Well, since you're here. My name is Jordan! I'm a game developer working on a Deckbuilding Roguelite that I think will be a lot of fun!... Once it finally comes out. I have been in development for about two years now, and I was in "pre production" if you want to call it that, for about a year before that. I am very lucky to be able to be working on this game full time, and I am mad that it is taking me so long to release it >:( but I have been making tons of progress, and I'm less mad about that :D

The game is called CHOPPY WATERS! It is a sushi themed deck builder set in a quirky pirate infested world. The main "hook" of the game is that you craft your own cards, not just your deck. As you explore the map you pick up ingredients (usually fish) that you that squish together into a sushi card that you use in "combat". The ingredients will either provide your sushi with stats (like damage and health) or give your sushi special abilities - ooh. My friends tell me I've got a pretty addictive game loop. One of my friends even played the first playtest version for over 100 hours!! (That was because he left it running on his computer for a couple of days, but I don't have to tell you that part!)

Speaking of the playtest! I recently ran a playtest! I thought it went extremely well! I had 38 active play testers with a median playtime of 47 minutes! That's pretty good for an alpha demo build if I do say so myself. Also, before you say anything, I SAID MEDIAN, my 100 hour friend doesn't count in that! I swear to God, if anyway messages about me about that I'm going 👏 to 👏 lose 👏 it!

Game dev is really fun :D but also really hard/stressful D: That's a big reason I wanted to make this blog in the first place. To talk about all things game dev as I experience them. I'll be writing more in the future about the playtest, the game, my thought process and methodology, and anything else I can think of! Did I mention that I recently added an adaptive soundtrack to the game using FMOD? No? Well that's probably because I got tired of writing and decided to do it later, get off my back! So, if any of that sounds interesting to you, THEN LEAVE! You're not even allowed to be here! I don't know how you got here in the first place!

Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading all that... because it's the last thing you'll ever see. 😠 Like those old chain emails that used to get sent around. This is like those emails because it doesn't actually do anything :D In fact I hope that this post did no harm to you whatsoever, and if it did... I cannot be held responsible because I warned you ahead of time. 🙂‍↕️

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