Sadly little writing happened tonight, though I did get a good start on the intro yesterday. I had planned to post about but my internet connection was sucky and my computer was acting funny so I decided to leave it alone for the day. Today, I decided to not make my VN project with more than one boy to chase to save time, and I decided to focus on the guy I found the most interesting, the bad boy type. ^__^

Other than that most of my morning and evening went to painting our house before we move, we still have three more rooms to do so a lot of writing might not be done tomorrow neither, I pray that won't be the case though, I really want to finish this by deadline and finally finish my first Visual Novel.

Okay, I did it once, I did it twice, and now I'm doing it a third time. I'm starting yet another development blog, hopefully it will be my last for a while, but I make no promises. I didn't understand why I never liked any of my blogs, but I think it's cause I just didn't like working on wordpress, blogger seems so much more simpler to me.

Since my other blog was added to the blog roll at Planet EVN I don't feel right adding my ramblings up there, especially since I don't do that much artwork until I got the basic story down, when most people are interested in the graphics. To be honest I'm flatter my blog was added to Planet EVN and a little embarrassed to add anything now unless I think it's perfect. So for now, all my whining, concerns, and frustrations will be featured here, while all my achievements, screenshots, and other important updates will be held over there.

As you can guess by the title, this is a entry made to help you nurse your writing creativity and skills. I can usually find a bunch of topics dedicated to the visual aspect of a VN, but not so much for the writing aspect at all. It’s important to remember that both elements are equally important to making a visual novel and that no creator should focus more on one part than the other.

I would first like to say that I am not the best writer out there, trust me you can find better, but I’m always willing to help you improve your skills if you would like to learn. There are some things that I know that can help you become a better writer and they are some things that you know that can help me become a better writer. So please don’t hesitate to give me tips you learned or ask for any in return. Knowledge is knowledge and it’s useless unless we are willing to apply what we know and share it with others.

Writing is a skill
First things first, I need everyone out there to know that writing, like art, is a skill. Yes, there are people out there who are naturally talented at it, but it is still a skill. Everyone can do it and everyone can learn to do it well, so don’t get discouraged when your first attempt doesn’t quite compare to your idol’s.

I guarantee you that the person you idolize in art or writing, did not start creating masterpieces from day one. They started like everyone else, by learning how to walk before they crawled, they explored new tips and techniques, and they practicing all the time. You don’t become a “master” of anything without first being a newbie and taking it from there, so follow their lead, learn everything you can, and then build on your skill.

You won’t become a master in a day, but you will see results if you keep at it. If you are patient I guarantee you will see a remarkable improvement in your newer works compared to your old. Remember, practice makes perfect.

Start a development journal
This journal idea is for the people who have a lot of concerns about their story and just can’t seem to start writing because of it. Start a new document with Microsoft or notepad and write every one of these fears down until you start to feel relaxed. This gets the weight of fear off your shoulder and lets you focus on your story. It helps to relieve any stress you might feel before you write and calms your nerves. Then all there is left to do is to write.

About the Rough Drafts
Sometimes people need to be reminded that a rough draft is just that, a rough draft. You shouldn’t be obsessing over word usage and other mechanical errors as much as you should focus on what you’re writing as a whole. So don’t expect perfection one the first go and better yet don’t even look for it. At this stage of the game, you just want to get the story down on paper and have fun writing it, the editing and revising can wait until later.

Don’t forget to edit
If you think that your job is over as soon as you put the last period to your ending, then you’re wrong. By editing and revising your story, you are improving your quality of work before you share it with the world. Editing your story gets rid of the inconsistencies in your story and the punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors that we are all prone to make. Unfortunately, it is often overlooked, leaving plenty of stories unfinished and unpolished which will take away from your story value as a whole.

When you write the best story of your lifetime, do you really want it overshadowed by the grammar, punctuation, and other mistakes you made? If not, take the time to edit your work, you story will look and read much better because of it.

Find a good editor
Not all of us are good at editing our own papers or seeing our own mistakes, so an outside pair of eyes should always be welcomed. Aleema, on the lsf forums was my first editor ever, and she ripped apart my rough draft with red text, footnotes, and crossed out words. It hurt at first, but I learned more about editing and writing from her in one day then I would have in months on my own.

If you can’t find a editor, then I advise you tuck your story away for a week or two and then try editing yourself. Sometimes giving your brain and eyes time to rest will help you edit your work because by then you’ll be looking at it with fresh and alert eyes. Also, try reading a sentence you’re not sure about out loud, it will help flesh out unclear sentences every time.

None of your work is useless
It doesn’t matter if you wrote something that you think sucks or someone else dislikes, all of your work is apart of your writing experience. The more you work on a skill the better it will become and terrible stories can help you grow too because they teach you what not to do next time.

Picking out which story idea to follow
Since we are all creative beings it’s normal for us to have a lot of story ideas bouncing around in our heads from time to time. The trick is deciding which ones to keep and which one to let go. When I’m deciding what idea to go with I consider:

• Is this a solid idea or a passing one: We all get inspiration sometimes, but there is a difference in which ones will leave and which ones will last. If you have a story idea you love, but then can’t remember it the next day then it’s not worth pursuing. The solid story ideas will haunt you all today, tomorrow, and beyond so there’s are the ones I’m more likely to follow.
•  Workload: A very important part of deciding which story to follow. If it’s very long and you’re the only member on your team then it’s not likely to be finished anytime soon unless you have a lot of patience or volunteers who will help you out. Also, are you likely to follow through with a longer game or a shorter game should also be a deciding factor.
•  Passion: Is this a story you can see yourself finishing? If not then you should probably quit right now instead of spending time on a story that you don’t even believe you’ll complete. If you believe your patience and perseverance can outlast the workload and other stresses, then all means go on ahead. I’ll look forward to reading it.
•  Goal or overall message of the story: I like my stories to fulfill a certain goal or convey a certain message, if my new story idea doesn’t have a basic goal or message then what would be the point in me making it?  

Not being afraid of you
Some of us are afraid of a lot of things, for some it is the fear of failure and for some it’s fear of success. A lot of people have started to be afraid of making mistakes and failing at the things we care about. As a result some of us don’t even try at all anymore, but I believe the only way you can truly fail is by not trying at all.

Think about it, would you rather try something and fail, or fail by not even trying at all? What can you achieve by being afraid all of the time? We will always fail at something, but we slowly get better with each try. Failure today does not mean we can’t achieve our goals later.  How did we learn how to crawl, to walk, to read, and to talk if not by failing and trying again and again until we succeeded? If you could be that brave and confident as a child then why can’t you feel that way now?

Another fear to talk about: the fear of success and the worry about what would happen if we gained what we wanted and then lost it. Some of us don’t try because we don’t believe that we deserve to achieve all that we want or we fear we won’t be able to achieve something that great again. My question is who taught you to think like that? Are you making your stories to make someone else happy or to make you happy? Who says you don’t deserve to achieve what you worked hard for and what could you possibly have done that bad to be punished all your life with unfulfilled goals?

Who are we trying to prove yourselves to? Does it matter if the entire world doesn’t like your story when you know that you did the absolute best you can do and are completely satisfied with the results? Does someone else failing to see the beauty in your work automatically make your work worthless?

No, it doesn’t. At the end of the day, if you’re happy with what you did then no one else’s opinion should matter. You shouldn’t write to prove something to someone or to make someone else happy, you have to write for you. If you love what you do and you did the best you can, then everyone else’s opinion should be secondary. Period.

How to tell the reader about your world without being to obvious. As You Know and The Watson
The Writers need for experience: here
How to finish a novel: here

Today, I went to Osaka to find the answers to the following questions:

1. How much anime and visual novel related merchandise can one purchase with $100?
2. Do people in Osaka really jaywalk all the time?

The answers were quite surprising.

From left to right: Gundam 00, Tohou 11: Subterranean Animism, Ana Coppola figurine, ToHeart 2: X Rated, Miu Matsuoka figurine, Over Flag.

The answer to the first question is “a hell of a lot of stuff.” With just a hundred dollar budget, I was able to acquire two Gundams, two Strawberry Marshmallow moeblobs, a popular eroge, and a doujin bullet curtain game. And I thought all of this stuff would take over $400 to buy…

Also, I should mention that Princess Waltz and Suika were both in the bargain bin for $10. Deux ex Demonbane and Da Capo were about $25 each, I think…

And also… Yes, the people in Osaka really do jaywalk all the time…

Filed under: Anime, J-Games

As February 7th is Lilly's birthday, here is a celebratory picture of Akira and Lilly, drawn by Weee.


There is also another announcement to make:

Pimmy, a talented fanartist many of you may have seen on the forums and on the Shimmie (and, for the attentive, the staff page of our website), has now joined the ranks of the developers as an artist. Congratulations, Pimmy.

Development of the game itself is still progressing, with scenes and CGs still being steadily produced and the paths directed. Once again, a big thank you goes out to all who are patiently waiting for the game's release.

 - Suriko

Not literally, of course. I mean making cuts and edits.

Someone once said that to be a writer, you have to be willing to kill your children. This weekend is definitely proof of that.

I'm working on a project - the script reached 406 pages (the page count of my last project) and was close to 1/3 completed. This, I decided, was unacceptably long. With a page count of 1200 (as would've been the projected final product) the logistics of creating such a monster would be a nightmare. Not to mention the undeniable reality that the game would just be too damn long for anyone to actually sit and read all the way through. I'm not J.K. Rowling - I'm not sure I could get my fans to sit through an 800 page novel.

So after deciding last night that the script was too long, I went about making cuts this morning. Cutting is a depressing process, let me tell you. How many hours of work am I stripping away? How many great pieces of dialogue? There were scenes that I would've rather died than parted with... But then I realized they didn't add to the story I really wanted to tell, so they had to go.

I've found a much more quick and manageable way of writing the rest of the game. I'm hoping that with these cuts I'll get down to around 275 pages before continuing. (I know! Cutting over 125 pages? It's scary). I hope the rest will go much smoother/quicker.

Heh. I guess I could always shove a "deleted scenes" section in the extras of my game. There's some really cute stuff that I'm sad had to go.

Oh well - off to kill more babies.

(And also my birthday but most people won't care about that!)

A romantic game for a romantic holiday - I'm putting Fatal Hearts on sale for $5 until Valentine's. No membership or other purchase thingy required, just buy the game before Feb 15th, put in the discount code, and you're good to go.

The code, demo downloads, and order information can be found at the game webpage:



Fatal Hearts

I can’t show much from the second chapter because the whole thing is a huge spoiler. All I can really tell you is that it’s actually a prequel instead of a sequel… and this time, instead of the usual ending and a true canon ending, you’ll either get the bad end or the canon end. (Speaking of that, did anyone get the canon ending for chapter 1 yet? :P)

Unrelated, feel free to follow my Twitter account for VN-related tweets.

I finally saw it! It was a pretty big challenge finding a theater that was showing it, travelling to Kyoto, buying the tickets, and actually getting to my seat all in Japanese, but in the end, it was totally worth it.

WARNING: MAJOR MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD

It looks like the movie deviates quite significantly from the anime series. As you may expect, the movie begins with Yuno fighting a monster created by a lost jewel seed and quickly losing. On the way home from school with her friends Sanzen’in Nagi Alisia Bannings and Suzuka Tsukimura, young Nanoha Takamichi hears Yuno’s voice via telepathy and finds him injured in his ferret form in a forest. She takes him to a vet, where the doctor tells her that he will recover soon. Later that night, Yuno contacts her again via telepathy and Nanoha returns to the vet’s, only to find that the previous monster had found its way to Yuno and is attacking him. During the fight, Yuno recruits Nanoha to become a mahou shoujo and Nanoha transforms for the first time in an all new, crazier than ever before henshin sequence. (It lasts about 90 seconds, I think) A pitched battle takes place and the monster is about to escape when Nanoha learns how to use Raging Heart’s Shooter Mode and guns it down. (Raging Heart looks different than from the anime series and the Shooter Mode now has a automatic rifle style trigger system.) Soon afterwards, Yuno explains how he comes from the planet of Midchilda and that he must collect all the lost jewel seeds.

The next day, we see a bunch of cute little kittens playing with each other. However, one of them comes into contact with a jewel seed, transforming it into a monstrous black saber tooth tiger who scares the two other kittens away. Nanoha comes to the scene to collect the jewel seed, but is interrupted with the sudden appearance of Fate Testarossa. They dispatch the monster together and Nanoha believes that they are on the same side, but soon realizes that Fate has no intention of releasing the jewel seed to her when she opens fire on her. Nanoha asks Fate to explain herself. Fate, taken by her kindness, opens her mouth to speak, but realizes the necessity of her mission and changes her mind at the last second. Using her superior magical powers, Fate blasts Nanoha away and she falls to the ground. Fate collects the jewel seed and leaves. As she does so, she softly whispers to Nanoha that she is sorry. Nanoha painfully picks herself off the ground, sees that the original kitten that transformed into the monster is safe, and promises that she will try harder to learn magic and come to an understanding with Fate.

Later, Fate wanders around the city. At an intersection, she sees a mother caring for her two children and sadly remembers a picnic she shared with Precia. Precia calls her “Alicia” and puts a flower bouquet on her head while smiling.

The next day, Nanoha returns to school. During class, she gets Raging Heart to perform a mental training exercise and she continues to practice using magic every day. Eventually, one month passes.

Fate and Nanoha’s paths once again cross when they find a jewel seed in the middle of the city. Fate stands silently a top an enormous pillar while Nanoha attempts to befriend her. Fate rejects her offer and regretfully tells Nanoha that her mission must be accomplished. Nanoha, seeing no other choice, decides to fight Fate. Yuno is about to help Nanoha, but is stopped by Arf’s arrival. After a brief fight, Nanoha and Fate both blast the jewel seed with their respective long range attacks, causing the two beams to collide and massively explode. Through the resulting smoke, the two of them lunge for the jewel seed and simultaneously try to capture it. Their devices are unable to handle the pressure and the jewel seed destabilizes, causing a massive explosion that damages both Bardiche and Raging Heart and that throws Nanoha and Fate to the ground.

All of a sudden, Chrono arrives and casts a bind on Fate and Nanoha. He orders them to halt by order of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. However, Arf frees Fate and she stumbles to the jewel seed and tries to capture it by hand. The process is dangerous and Fate winces in pain as the jewel seed burns through her hand. Arf cries at Fate to stop and to retreat. Chrono orders Fate to halt and is about to open fire on her, but Nanoha yells at him to stop. Fate manages to capture the jewel seed and quickly retreats with Arf.

Chrono takes Nanoha and Yuno to the capital ship Asura, where they meet Captain Lindy. Lindy clears Nanoha of any wrong doing and recruits her help in recovering the lost jewel seeds. Chrono protests, but Lindy shuts him down in no time at all.

Meanwhile, Fate returns to Precia’s floating castle. Precia observes the jewel seeds Fate has collected with dissatisfaction. Fate smiles meekly at her and offers her a cake that she bought. Precia strikes at Fate and smashes the cake to the ground. She pulls out her whip and tells Fate that she must be punished for her failure. Fate quietly obeys and is whipped by her mother.

Fate returns to earth to collect the remaining jewel seeds. After finding them in the stormy ocean, Fate casts a massive spell that raises the jewel seeds from the water. However, a massive water monster appears and attacks Fate. Her injuries already severe, she valiantly but hopelessly fights against the water kraken. Meanwhile, Nanoha and Yuno track the battle from the Asura. Chrono orders everybody to hold position and let the monster finish Fate off. However, Yuno telepathically tells Nanoha that he will cause a distraction so Nanoha can leave the Asura and rescue Fate. Yuno casts a defensive spell and holds Chrono off while Nanoha teleports out from the Asura. Nanoha flies at top speed towards Fate and busts through the thick storm clouds, causing a hole where light pours through as she meets Fate.

Nanoha dispatches the sea kraken with a massive divine buster. However, her victory is short lived as Precia’s floating castle appears and causes a massive thunder storm. During the ensuing chaos, Fate attempts to take all seven of the jewel seeds, but is stopped when Chrono arrives. With all of her remaining power, Fate pushes Chrono out of the way, but by then, he has already managed to collect four of the seven jewel seeds. Fate retreats with Arf with the remaining three jewel seeds.

At Precia’s fortress, Fate is once again whipped by Precia for her failure. Arf, unable to take it any longer, rages into Precia’s throne room and angrily confronts Precia. She pushes Precia through the wall and into a back room behind the throne. There, Arf sees that Precia has constructed a second clone of Alicia. Now that she has seen the clone, Precia is unwilling to let her live and blasts Arf with her most powerful attack. Arf retreats just in time and falls to Earth heavily injured.

At the Asura, Lindy lectures Nanoha for disobeying orders. However, she decides to forgive Nanoha and Yuno because they now know for certain that the real perpetrator of the incident is Precia Testarossa. Nanoha returns to Earth, where Alicia Bannings invites her to her house to play on the Wii and to see a strange dog that she found. Once Nanoha arrives, she sees that the strange dog is actually Arf. Nanoha leaves Yuno with Arf to find out what’s going on while Alicia takes her away to play on the Wii with her.

Arf explains what is going on with Fate and Precia to Yuno, Chrono, and Lindy. Using the new intel from Arf, Chrono devises a plan to lure Fate to Nanoha by using the jewel seeds as bait. The plan works and at an abandoned city, Fate arrives to meet Nanoha. Nanoha shows Fate the jewel seeds she has collected so far and tells Fate that she is willing to fight with all of them on the line. The two mahou shoujo collide and begin their first all out battle.

The two of them weave through the city’s buildings in a frantic chase as they blast each other with magical bullets. Then they accelerate upwards towards the sky and have a tight dogfight in the clouds. During the pitched battle, Fate has multiple flashbacks of her past. She remembers all of the happy memories she had with her mother and swears that she will help mother so that the old days can return. Using all of her remaining energy, she binds Nanoha and casts her ultimate attack. A dozen, 30, 50, 100, 200 magical bullets appear around her and with a mighty shout, she fires all of them at Nanoha. That not being enough, she then summons an massive Lance of Longinus-esque spear of thunder and hurls it at Nanoha. A massive explosion ensues. Fate, convinced that her attack finally downed Nanoha, smiles in relief between her labored breaths. However, her face turns to horror when the smoke clears, revealing Nanoha relatively unharmed.

Nanoha powers up her most powerful divine buster yet and opens fire on Fate. She desperately raises up a shield, but the beam is mighty and her shield begins to falter. Her clothes begin to disintegrate under the massive attack and her shield is about to break when the attack suddenly ceases. Fate, thinking that she has survived, is in relief.

However, the attack was only a small taste of the things to come. Using all of the energy dissipated during the battle, Nanoha powers up her ultimate technique, the Starlight Breaker. Fate grits her teeth and raises five layers of magical shielding in front of her. The massive beam completely engulfs Fate and we see from her POV as one after another of her shields are almost instantly vaporized. A massive mushroom cloud explodes, completely annihilating what is left of the city and bleaching everything white.

Fate falls to the sea unconscious and is about to drown when Nanoha flies in and rescues her. She lays her on top of a piece of rubble and only then Fate finally realizes her kindness.

However, Precia’s castle once again appears and attempts to retrieve Fate. However, Nanoha flies in just in time and manages to bring her aboard the Asura. Lindy orders the Asura to warp to Precia’s castle and dispatches the (pathetic) mahou shounen squad to arrest Precia. They are almost instantaneously defeated.

Through the communicator, Precia shouts to Fate that she has always hated her and disowns her. Fate is horrified and goes into shock. At the floating castle, Precia has a flashback. We see that she had a daughter named Alicia. While she loved her, Precia could hardly ever spend time with her because of her job as a researcher. One day, her superiors threaten to halt her project unless it began to show more results. In an act of desperation, Precia orders the safety locks to be disengaged at her lab in order to accelerate her research. However, an experiment goes horribly wrong and releases radioactive material into the city that kills Alica. Precia, consumed by the guilt of having caused her daughter’s death, now dedicates her life to creating a clone of Alicia. Finally, she is successful and Fate is born. At first, Precia treats her exactly like her daughter, spending time with Fate that she could never give to Alica. However, Precia soon realizes that Fate is too different from Alicia and declares that she needs more power to create the perfect clone. She is in anguish that she lacks that power, but realizes that she could use Fate to acquire it. She laughs maniacally, her dark plan now set into motion. She summons a previously unseen nekomimi familiar, who trains Fate in the mahou shoujo arts.

However, the familiar begins to have doubts about Precia’s plan. She confronts Precia, who is suffering from the effects of radioactive poisoning herself and slowly dying. Precia declares that she does not have much more time to live and that her plan must be accelerated. She orders the familiar to finish training Fate and then to disappear for good.

The flash back ends. Nanoha, Yuno, Chrono, and Arf storm the castle, fighting through its mecha guardians, while Fate is still in a state of shock at the Asura. However, after seeing Nanoha fight, the power of Nanoha’s feelings reach Fate and she realizes that she must now fight to protect her friend. Fate calls upon Bardiche to fight once more and leaves the Asura to the tune of “Take a Shot.”

Just as Nanoha is about to be struck by a mecha, Fate arrives and dispatches it. Their celebration is short lived, as a massive mecha suddenly breaks through the wall and confronts the two of them. The two mahou shoujo combine their attacks and blow the giant mecha away in a spectacular attack.

Precia, who is on the verge of finally succumbing to her radiation poisoning, carries the clone of Alicia and is about to activate the jewel seeds and open a path to the legendary land of Aleehazard. However, Lindy informs the rest that with only the number of jewel seeds possessed by Precia, such a task is impossible and that she is only going to cause a massive tear in the space time continuum. Fate arrives and confronts Precia. Fate asks her mother to stop and to return to her. Precia softly mocks her and reminds her that she has always hated her. She activates the jewel seeds and causes a space time tear to occur.

The situation deteriorating, Lindy orders everyone to fall back. Fate cries out for her mother, but is too late. Precia and the unawakened clone of Alicia fall into a space time rip. As Precia falls, she has a flashback of a memory of Alicia. They are at a picnic together and Precia asks Alicia what she wants the most in the world. Alicia eagerly responds back that she wants a younger sister. Precia is shocked at the request and laughs nervously at her. Now, as she falls to her death, she softly murmurs to herself that Fate would have been that sister to Alicia.

Nanoha arrives and she escapes with Fate. Everyone makes it safely back to the Asura as the castle is swallowed up by the space time rip.

Fate is taken into custody, but Lindy expects that the trial will go favorably for her. The next day, Chrono, Arf, and Fate meet Nanoha for the last time before they leave back to their world. Fate promises to Nanoha that they will be friends forever. They exchange their hair bands before Chrono takes her back to the Asura. Nanoha smiles and tells Yuno that “Everything is fine.”

Response:
Overall, there were some quite big changes made to Fate and Precia’s characters. I was kind of disappointed that Fate was no longer a dark magical girl. She regrets what she is doing from the beginning and is portrayed as more of a victim who needed to be rescued by Nanoha rather than a dark magical girl who was reformed by her. In addition, I thought that Precia’s character was portrayed in a more positive light. In particular, I was surprised that they actually rewrote her death scene. In the movie, it seems like Precia regrets everything she did and wishes that things might have turned out differently, while in the anime, she dies like a crazy obsessive madwoman.

The animation received an expected massive boast. The majority of the movie features magical girl battles and all of them are beyond amazing. I am willing to wager that no other movie starring a magical girl has ever set off more pyrotechnics than this. Also, all of the new henshin sequences are pretty much jaw dropping. The sound effects also received a large improvement and was very impressive with the theater’s surround sound.

For the better or worse, the devices now actually speak regular English. No more broken grammar or horrible pronunciation.

However, the music was downright awful. They kept the exact same sound track from the anime series. Hearing what amounted to songs that might have come out from a Game Boy game nearly 5 years ago was not impressive, especially on the theater’s sound system.

However, it was still a pretty amazing experience, just because I got to actually see it in a real theater in Japan. No tiny little computer screen, no amateur English subs, actually had to pay over $20 for it, and a room full of other collage age otaku. Sugoi dessuuu! *_*

Filed under: Anime

I'm fascinated by this:



I have NO idea what it is because I can't read the language, but it looks lovely!

(Well, okay, not NO idea. It's an all-ages visual novel in Japanese which has something to do with the military and someone being brought back from the dead, but that's all I can tell.)

Today got more pictures for Planet Stronghold + new sketches for the new characters. I must say the improvement is great, and the game is changing from a “cute” look to a more “adult” look, but still using manga art. Michelle is the new character that was redone, and I like it a lot. She’s a small, thin girl but she is very determined in becoming a good soldier for the Empire!

Click on the thumbnail on the left to see it bigger, is worth it! This is her “casual dressed” version.

The new sketches looks also very promising. Rebecca, who is my favourite character, an aggressive and sexy woman of the Scout class, and also your training Sergeant, will have a big role through the whole game. While the older image was cute, the new one (just saw the sketch but I’m already loving it) will better represent her personality.

One last image showing both Lisa and Michelle in their uniform, during the training session. I’ve also started coding the Training Screen where you’ll be able to train your heroes skills without going to combat, but I am still doing some balancing / UI work so probably won’t be able to post any screens before 1-2 weeks.

I’ve also started another artist on the inventory/items art, since I decided to switch from just displaying text lines in the inventory to a standard icon inventory, so player will be able to recognize instantly the item from the shape/colors.

It’s about time I gave a status update for The Perfect World. In terms of development, I’ve only just scratched the surface… but hey, it’s something! :) I actually feel pretty good after seeing these numbers…. The game contains 468 screens of dialogue. These screens contain a total of 6498 words, for an average of 13.9 words per [...]

I finally started writing my valentine's day project. I spent some time with my friend which took up some of my time and I had a headache holding me back, but my creativity and drive is starting to inspire me. Wish me luck!

I used Flash for all my games, and one thing about Flash that’s different than most game making software is that it is actually an animation program before it became capable of creating websites and games. So you can say that not using animation in Flash is like wasting one of its most useful capabilities.

Speaking of animations, I like to divide them into 2 categories.

The first one is the type that you draw each frames differently. This is traditional animations, and it is what people like to call a “Real Animation”. The problem is this method is very time consuming. Imagine drawing 12 pictures for a mere 1 second animation. (Flash used 12 frames per second for its default setting.)

The second one is what I call “Slide Show”, which involve with sliding pictures, fading in and out, masking, and perhaps random particles. Basically it’s the cheapskate animation. It’s not capable of making a true moving picture, but if you are good at this, you can fool many into thinking things are animated.

My partner, Nitarou can’t use Flash nor can she animate. So all animation in Zeiva Inc Games fall into my hand. Unfortunately I am nothing more than 1 person. I have very limited capability of how much animations I can add into a game.

My earliest games relied heavily on “Slide Show”. Most of the cut scene movies are nothing more than just sliding pictures with simple animations added such as glows, eye blinking, lip syncing, etc. I like this method very much because it is very convenient, and if I used them cleverly, it could produce nice cinematic effect in a matter of days.

And then… One day, I saw Nitarou playing Summon Night 3, a Japanese Playstation 2 game. It is filled with colorful animations and it really make the entire setting to come alive. I was very impressed that I determined to add as many animations as I could for the next game.

Unfortunately that was ultimately the reason why Genetic Glow III ended up as a dead project. Not only there is an explorable map, this time all the chibi are animated. They will do random things like sleeping on spot, walking, blowing bubble, eating pork bun, drinking tea, etc. It’s truly a shame that GGIII will never make it online. Despite being a 5 years old project, it is still remain the most colorful project I have made.

Animation is really a powerful tool in game making. In my opinion it helps to set apart what constitute high budget vs low budget games.

So what’s about OASE? Is it just like my older game with less “Real Animation” or is it like Genetic Glow III which is rich of moving characters?

Suffice to say, I think I manage to make it in-between. The biggest lesson I learned from GGIII is that “Don’t be too ambitious!”. Although I don’t think I completely learn that since OASE still took me over 3 years to make. ^^;;;

Back to Zeiva Inc Game Journal.
Back to Zeiva Inc Homepage.

Got nothing done because we had to tie up some loose ends before I move, I hope to make up a bunch tomorrow by getting at least one day and a half of the script complete.

Art.

Let's face it - without visuals, you ain't got much of a visual novel, now do you?

Being a one-woman studio, I provide all the art for my projects as well as doing all the writing. And coding, and designing, etc...

For my thirteenth birthday my parents bought me a sketchbook - the Strathmore Recycled Paper Series, size 9x12, retail value $11.75 at most art stores. I now have nineteen of those sketchbooks piled under my computer desk at home; one with a proud "20" sharpied on the front cover is sitting next to me. (And yes, it's the exact same brand and size! Hey, you know what they say: if it ain't broke...)

Along with my writing, art has been one of my most passionate hobbies for a long time. I sketch probably every day and have spent years developing my style. My greatest influences have probably been Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21) and most recently the artist for the Otome Game Starry Sky, who uses a pen name that I haven't found out.

I've been drawing for nearly five years, but I've only seriously begun practice in the art of digital coloring this past year. My current weapon of choice is Paint Tool Sai. It's sorta fabulous. :3

These past few days have been very serious studies for me in terms of developing techniques and style for my CGing. I'm still so all over the place when it comes to my style and what I really want to achieve.
That's something I threw together while practicing. Not my most recent - but I'm pretty happy with it. (As for who he is...well, that may be revealed a bit down the road. ^_~)

When it comes to art, I feel like I'm at that frustrating "not quite pro" quality. In terms of my drawings, my coloring, everything. I'm trying my hardest, but it never seems to achieve the beautiful quality of pro artists. I guess I can hack this up to lack of experience and practice.

So I'll keep working! I have a goal of uploading a new piece to my devArt every three weeks (I'm a busy college student, so as much as I'll try to keep up with this, it may eventually fall by the wayside.) Practice makes perfect, as the so overused phrase seems to go! Wish me luck!

I'm having fun writing my upcoming visual novel, Mermaid Liaisons, which I've mentioned once or twice before. I've got a hard deadline at some point in June when I'm expecting a drop in free time, so I'm wanting to get the game released by May. I have been making progress in January, but pretty slowly. I want to spend more time writing in February, and then I'm thinking I'll spend a large amount of March writing script in a pretty focused way, trying to have at least two routes through the game completely finished by then.

My current progress is something like (at a rough estimate):
Chapter 1: 99%+ completed. Available as a demo to download.
Chapter 2: 90% written.
Chapter 3: 90% written.
Chapter 4: 70% written.
Chapter 5: 25% written.
Chapter 6: 0% written.

The reason it's not simply "finish one chapter then move on to the next", of course, is because of the crazy amount of branches. There is a central plot running through all the routes, but many branches both large and small: a number of choices the player can make will lead to different scenes, while others just have a little bit of varying dialogue before rejoining the main plot (having of course taken note of which choice the player made: I don't have any choices which have no effect at all on the plot).

And of course, events later in the game, including the availability of later branches, may vary depending on earlier choices, which means I'll often need to write at least three versions of some bit of late-game script: if the player chooses A, if the player chooses B, or if the player's earlier choices mean they don't get the choice. So for Chapters 2 and 3, I've written about half the routes all the way through the chapter, but there are a couple of choices where I've only filled in what happens for, say, two of the four branches.

So, yeah, writing is ongoing. As well as writing the main script of Chapter 5, I've been doing things like reshuffling when the events on Tohko's path happen relative to the events on the main plot, trying to work on the pacing, which I feel was one of the weak points to Elven Relations. I did plan how the different threads would occur relative to each other back when I was planning out all the plot a year ago (wow, that long), but I think it's normal to have to adjust these things as you actually write them.

Tohko's scenes are a bit more complicated to write than some of the other characters, because (as I mentioned in the Lemmasoft post announcing the game) I'm allowing the player to choose which of the Elven Relations endings to continue from. In some of those endings Tohko's single, in some she's with Takuya, and in one she's with Kei. Those relationships are still together at the start of Mermaid Liaisons, which means that Tohko will react very differently to Kei flirting with her – or with other girls!

But although her scenes are more complicated to write, she's not any more a "main" character of the story than the other three. Meressa, Cerissa and Hirana all have their stories, with obstacles and twists and character development. I'm thoroughly hoping that for each girl there'll be people for whom she's their favourite character. I was rather pleased that that's the case on the development thread already, just based on the character preview images; I'm definitely aiming to have that be the case once people have been able to play through all the ways this story can go :)

I don't know how many people will actually find this interesting, but I'm going to post it anyway. Side by sides of my original sprite and expressions for Kuu and the new sprite and expressions by Deji.