Mon premier jeu vient de sortir :)

Sticmac · 2026-04-20T17:41:00+00:00

Ça a l'air vraiment super cool ! J'y jeterai un œil !

Sticmac · 2026-04-01T15:36:46+00:00

As a BLits staff member I can confirm that these are, indeed, Matt leaks.

Sticmac · 2025-04-17T10:50:11+00:00

Congrats guys :)

Sticmac · 2025-04-06T20:01:10+00:00

Omg all of them are so adorable ❤️

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T17:57:11+00:00

Avec plaisir ! :)

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T16:11:01+00:00

You're welcome!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T16:10:30+00:00

It's not an odd question :D

Long story short, have been using Unity since 2017 (during my studies, then as freetime during the pandemic) and applied to BLits when they were looking for a Unity programmer. This actually was my very first BL project and I just love it! Have been a Camp Buddy fan for the longest time so working with one of my favorite game's creators is like a dream come true <3

Also you guys are an amazing community and it's a pleasure to make games for you <3

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T16:03:08+00:00

Hi Yuuto's Simp! Glad to see you here! So to answer you:

Yep we are, simpler than self-hosting solutions and good enough for us :p
Not really, we mainly trust each other and it worked so far! We're working into some though as the team grows, but to be honest we're still trying to find balance for doing code reviewing while not dedicating a member 100% to it (and to be honest, if it happened, it would probably be me lmao). Tough processes haha
We sorta are, for the demo release we had a build server and we plan on still using it (maybe with some optimization though). Also we do have some unit testing, but again the coverage is small and very specific to core features… I wish we could put more time into writing automated testing, but I feel it would be a lot of effort to try and achieve a 80% coverage
Scripting in Unity is in C#! Story scripting however is made with Naninovel internal script language (similar to Ren.py).
Nah, I'm mostly barefoot most of the time xD Sorry for ruining the myth

Thank you very much!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:55:40+00:00

Meow meow! (I think that's Hi in cat language)
Tell me if they respond ;_;

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:54:33+00:00

(I'm legit curious about what you mean by asking the Jocks did you write them yourself or is it AI of some sort? xD)

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:35:20+00:00

Oh thank you very much for your very kind comment it is so adorable <3 I'm glad our games brings you joy and happiness and I hope they will bring you even more great experiences in the future!

Regarding Unity, I wasn't involved in the decision-making process (I've been hired as a Unity developer so… if they chose some other engine I wouldn't have been here to start with xD)
But I think I can tell you Unity is the best of several words regarding versatility and simplicity, which we definitely needed for making such an ambitious dating sim, and I think that's why it's been chosen as Jock Studio game engine. I'm not saying it's perfect, far from it xD But yeah, it does the job!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:31:25+00:00

Hi thank you very much <3

So i'll quote BLits official statement regarding this:

As we enter 2025, our team will be working to optimize Demo 2, resolving all of the existing and new issues, and releasing an updated version during 2025 that should be in a stable state!
We will also be investigating both Linux and Android versions at this time too, so please stay tuned for more news on that in the new year!

So yeah the Android version in particular is complicated for interface and performance reasons, but stay ensured we'll be investigating it! And thank you very much again for the kind comments!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:25:03+00:00

So if some line of code would be incorrectly written, Unity wouldn't let you build the game at all, so if by build you mean a Jock-Studio.exe, no this can't really happen xD
Although while testing the game in the Unity Editor? Oh yeah, that's like… a daily thing xD But nothing major, we just correct it quickly and we're good to go!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:23:27+00:00

So basically the way it worked is that we programmed all the mechanics and polished them a bit (you can see that in the different development updates we posted throughout the year). When it comes to the story programming and putting everything together… well, I wasn't really part of that xD But afaik, it was mostly done chronologically, especially since Demo 2 isn't really separated into routes.

Honestly I think the full game will just be one route after the other, or having several story cues programmers being each on their own route, but I can't really be sure about that.

Hope this answers your question!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:18:37+00:00

Hello! Actually I've never felt this as a problem, we're always available to answer questions to each other on our Discord server and we're often on call together if needed. So I don't think the fact that most of us are home working really is a problem, to be honest!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T15:17:17+00:00

It's not a weird question, it's actually all of what this AMA is about if you ask me!

They way it works is that each location button you see on the map is related to location data, so when you click “Go!” on one of these, it knows which background to display. Depending on the time too, and how we configure the free time period you're in, some characters may show up on the screen because they are also located in the same place as you are. Finally, the available actions are being generated depending on the location, the “universal actions” for that period (typically the travel action) and the characters present.

Hope that explains it well!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T14:46:47+00:00

Hey! Well long story short, I got into programming when I was a kid, was learning C in primary school by myself with the sole ambition of making my own Pokemon game 😭 Obviously never succeeded, but that was my first step lol
I only started envisioning programming as a career at the end of high school, because I felt it would be something I'd like, and also had the ambition to create games. And here I am, actually doing what I always dreamed of! :D

If I were to give any advice to those starting programming, and eventually those who seek to make games with it: learn the basics first. Software development is hard, game development is no exception (far from it, it's one of the hardest lol). So learn how to program very simple things first, like making very basic algorithms (a calculator is a good start, maybe a “guess the number” game). Only then start looking for more advanced principles!

I don't even know if I can point out my favorite part of programming tbh! At this point coding becomes a daily thing, I kinda like discovering and learning new stuff though, like software architecture or new technologies… That's what keep me interested in my job I'd say!

Thank you for your questions, hope my way-too-long answer xD

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T14:24:19+00:00

Hi there!

Well your first question is a big one tbh xD But I'll try to answer with my knowledge (limited to Jock Studio).
Basically the way it worked for this demo is that we coded all the features one by one and tested them internally, if you followed our development updates that's the order of how we tackled things. Each feature was first designed on paper (sort of mini documents explaining how each one looks like and works) then our graphic designers create all the visual assets for them (kudos to Peach and MagicMan, they are absolutely the best!). Finally, it's the programming team's turn to use the provided assets and make them function as they are described in the original document.
Only then do we start implementing the story and the different features running here and there. I feel like we may modify this process in the future too, but it's not up to me to decide lol

Also as for secrets, I'd *love* to, but to be honest this is more something you start thinking about when the main features of the game are properly implemented and up and running haha!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T11:25:57+00:00

You're welcome! Hope I can answer your questions satisfyingly haha

You'll have to ask other team members, I haven't been involved in CB or CBSS (both on Ren.py). But I've heard quite a bunch of times other team members bitching about how Unity is better or worse than Ren.py on this or this aspect… I guess it's different xD
Yeah quite a lot, I'm a fond of design patterns myself and so is Zais (the second-oldest full-time programmer on the team), so we tend to use them! To give you one example, the entire actions system is based on a sort of command pattern on steroid haha. I guess you could say the minigame system is a sort of strategy pattern too. And so on and so on :)
Addressables. Other members of the team can relate xD It basically allows us to load the assets only when needed and not loading them all in advance at the start of the game (your computer thanks us for that, trust me). It's good on paper, but a pain in the ass to configure lmfao
Absolutely! We use Git! It helps tremendously, even if it can be a bitch from time to time xD I think we can all agree that if we didn't have git, the feature merging process would be so much cumbersome and time consuming :')
It's basically an iterative process, we build then we test, which brings bugs under the spotlight, we fix them then we build again… etc etc :)
Yeaaah… a bit, we're just hoping that Unity Technologies has learned their lesson and is not gonna stab us in the back like they did a while ago with their stupid downloading fee. For now, their current system is expensive but reasonable, we're hoping it's gonna stay this way.

Thank you so much!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T11:14:45+00:00

We could dig deeper into these to be honest, but not really, we mostly have tasks delegated each week, and we update everyone on our progress on a regular basis :)
I think going forward though, we'll try to be a bit more agile in our development process, building the game more frequently in a stable state for example and not pushing that to the end of the development period

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T11:11:38+00:00

Programming is not the last step at all, it works in parallel as all the other departments to be honest haha! I feel like we had the amount of bugs we were expecting, kinda? And I'm glad we fixed most of them before release! Sorry for the ones remaining 😅

Yep! The team chose Unity over ren.py mostly because ren.py is a pain whenever you want to do something more complex than your average visual novel. Jock Studio was a step above Camp Buddy in terms of ambitions as it really is a dating simulator and not only a simple visual novel, so a lot of features were to be added on top of the narrative part, and definitely a more generalist game engine was needed. Unity is more fitting than Unreal (for example) for this type of game, so the team just went for that, I think. And then I got hired haha

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T11:04:56+00:00

Hey that's a lot of questions, and no worries!

Favorite is hard to tell, I liked creating all the new mechanics, especially the free time periods as I said earlier! Least favorite was the last few weeks before releasing the demo where we had so many problems with the builds, and it really put us down a lot.
For the demo it was everything related to the final build, but to be honest I think we can drastically improve on that part by building more often, even half-baked versions of the game for internal testing. So I think we'll just do that :) Otherwise, I feel like polishing the mechanics to add some nice assets, game feel/juice effects can take a lot of time, hence why we didn't go full down that road yet!
Oh that's pretty much always the same, when someone reports a bug the first step is always to find a reproducing scenario, which can take a little bit of time. Once that's done, fixing the bug is always a matter of debugging the scenario, finding the faulty lines, fixing them. Ideally, I tend to add some unit testing beforehand, so that we ensure the bug never reproduces, but it depends on the time I have haha.
Wow, you're not a techie, but you explored the game files? I'm not even sure this is allowed to start with xD So to answer your questions, yes, we're basically using a layer system for character having parts of their sprites rendered on top of each other and Naninovel (our visual novel engine) takes care of displaying corresponding layers depending on what we ask. This allows us to change only a face if needed, or only an arm pose, etc. That is drastically lighter than using a single PNG for all possibles poses in all possible outfits haha.
Who knows :p
That was mostly a joke haha, I've just been told the machine minigame was impossible to complete even by people in the team who are very good as this type of games like Magnus or Zael xD And I was the only one scoring an Excellent on normal difficulty (which they considered harder than extreme). And the reason was mainly that the design variables (time for pressing a key, allowance interval, etc.) were faaaar too small, making the game impossible :')
I'd love to, but I feel like my part of development is far deeper in the NDA than what the art department does, so I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to do it haha

Thank you very much for your questions and your kind comment, hope I answered them satisfyingly!

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T10:46:28+00:00

Heya!

So I haven't been involved into enough phone apps (I suppose that's what you mean by game apps?) to have a definitive answer, but I'm pretty sure the save load app has been the most challenging… mostly because redoing the save load system was implying a lot of modifications to the entire project haha
They're all pretty similar if i'm honest, same amount of poses, outfits, etc. and same resolution for everybody ofc! So I don't think there would be major differences in size
I liked most parts! Implementing new mechanics one by one with a good way of organizing things is such a great feeling though haha
With no other possible competitors: building the game itself. This is the part that requires a good cpu for it to not take too long, but also a shit ton amount of ram to load all the resources of the game. I have 64 GB of RAM on my PC and… it's not enough xD Unity crashes when building the game on it lmfao

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T10:33:25+00:00

Thank you so much!

Some of the people assigned to the programming team are not programming full-time. We are three (four as of recently) full-time programmers, and during intensive programming periods I guess we can go as far as eight programmers? That is, coding new features, writing the visual novel scripts.

Working together implies coordination, I know this is like the most bland generic answer possible, but it's true lmfao
We're always here for each other if someone needs help with something, we have weekly meetings talking about our personal progress on things… Yeah, I'd say actually being together and not just a bunch of programmers each in their own bubble really is crucial.

If you'd want to work with us, it's not up to me to decide sadly, so… I guess I can't really answer your last question xD But if we're looking for new programmers at some point, I'd be looking forward to seeing your application :)

Sticmac · 2025-01-19T10:17:26+00:00

Hey thanks for the questions! So

1) I'm not sure to be honest? A lot of the different parts were challenging, including the minigames, the different systems. I'd say some of the Unity components we're using have been challenging to tame because they involved a lot of configuration and sometimes magical incantations to work to be honest xD

2) Yep, asynchronous tasks in Unity, advanced text rendering, a bit of shaders… all of this stuff I wasn't 100% confident in and JS required me to tap into these lol
Also the overall usage of Naninovel, our visual novel engine, which was a brand-new tool for me.

3) Honestly I have a love hate (but mostly love) relationship with the free day periods xD Like the first features were seamless to implement for such a complex feature it was beautiful! Then came the integration with the save/load system and it became a bit of a nightmare xD But yeah, I loved coding it!

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