Planet EVN - English Visual Novels

My daily journey: Terrible secrets

2010-09-01T18:10:48+00:00

Yesterday I discovered something very terrifying, so please bear with me.
Well, it's a very old artist trick, but it's something new to me...

I was playing around with Photoshop and I decided to flip some of my drawings (Image > Rotate Canvas > Flip Canvas Horizontal ) and I was astonished to find numerous serious mistakes in my art. It was like it was not even the same picture I was looking at!
It was scary because I immediately thought "so that's how people see my art" ... When you're drawing a picture your brain gets used to the mistakes and you end up to not notice them at all. But somehow, when you flip the picture up, your brain makes you see it like it's a new one and not the old one you're used to see.

To sum it up:

Aww... finally the pictures are finished. Hey, it doesn't look so bad (the text-box is bit out of place, I will fix that).
However... Anne looks odd, doesn't she?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUU WHY ;_;
For you, reader, this might not be different from the original (except the fact that it's reversed).
For me it looks like it changed drastically. Look at the errors, they're so ugly ;_; .

Should I redraw the only thing? Yes, I think so. Hmn... But if I keep redrawing everything this Visual Novel is going to take a long time till it's finished :'( .

sakevisual: Wordcount Wednesday - hanami x 2

Ayu — 2010-09-01T18:03:12+00:00

Yay, it's time for Wordcount Wednesday! Alliteration is FUN.

The game contains 591 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 5,524 words,
for an average of 9.3 words per screen.
The game contains 7 menus.

For those of you looking for something to measure that number against, that's about one fourth of the words in RE: A++. Also enjoy the pretty sketch of the heroine, Teisen, drawn by Misteen.

Winter Wolves: Au revoir, Vera Blanc

2010-08-30T18:28:23+00:00

In other words, the second episode of Vera Blanc, “Ghost In The Castle”, is officially out. To find more about it, just visit the game official page at http://www.verablanc.com
This time, Vera must investigate a mysterious ghost that is haunting a old castle in the italian town of Bargi. It’s the ghost real or is a myth? is Roberto Anastasi, the man who hired you for this case, hiding something? why Eva and the Master are still following you?

You’ll find answers to all those questions in the second and for now last episode. As I said before, it’s very unlikely that a 3rd chapter of the game will be released in this format, since the production costs are much higher than those of a traditional visual novel, but maybe next year something might change. I would like to make a “real adventure game” based on Vera Blanc character since I think would be perfect for that kind of game.

Imagine something similar to those good old Lucasfilm adventures with many puzzles to solve, less texts to read, and maybe a fully voiced version.

However, first need to finish several other projects I’ve started (many RPGs and otome games) and then next year we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you like the games I’m producing, and if you like the character of Vera Blanc, please buy the game and spread the word so the chances of having a 3rd great episode will increase

So for now, au revoir Vera Blanc. Hopefully she’ll come back next year in a completely new gameplay system, and why not, maybe with a more manga-oriented style!

Hi no Yabu: Blue Rose – Character development?

2010-08-30T16:28:07+00:00

During the writing of a story some characters can develop in very surprising ways. I’m sure other authors know this well. In the early stages of Blue Rose, I mapped out important characters and the roles they were going to play along with their personalities and stances on the main plot. But as is usually the case, things take sudden changes in direction when these characters jump off the drawing table and are actually let loose in the script.

It doesn’t matter how much preparation and planning is done, the real development happens in the actual writing.

One of these is Gavin, for who I first finished writing the final ending and epilogue. Gavin is the superficial skirt-chaser who would say a nice word to any lady walking past, without that necessarily having any deeper meaning to him. At least that’s what he was supposed to be. That part of him still exists, but he has taken on quite a life of his own and shown me sides of him that I never knew would come to be. When I yell “come on Gavin, you shouldn’t care about silly things like that!” he’ll reply with a defiant “but I DO!!”

It’s the same with the rest. Erin who was supposed to be the frail, sensitive girl has ended up kicking aside anyone who gets in her way (especially Gavin gets to feel this), determined to make it on her own. Due to that she sometimes borders on being somewhat of a troublemaker and pain in the ass, but I hope the readers will be able to see past her flaws and see her good intentions

Simon has moved from passive non-caring role to someone who is serially confused about what to do with Lena. (Serially confused. I love that phrase. Guess where I stole it from and I’ll give you a cookie).

Especially Simon has changed so much and acted so opposite of what was originally planned that for a while I wasn’t even sure how he would shape up in his own route, where he finally gets the chance to step up front. The result has been… interesting. As usual he has a tendency to draw the short end of the stick, but I like what he has turned into – even his bad ending feels important to me, and really show what kind of person he is. For a short (insane) moment I even considered making it canon when thinking of what general consequences that ending has for Lena’s future life. (But that’s just too sad, isn’t it? Let’s hope for things to turn out better than that!)

Just like the other two characters I have written so far, Simon is now a hard competitor for being my favourite. Now it’s Tobias’ turn.

Which means I am done writing the first 3 out of 5 routes in Blue Rose. Hurray!

Project Memoria: Aurelia moisturizes

2010-08-30T13:23:35+00:00

Good morning! This weekend I managed to get a base pose done for (NSFW) Aurelia. This time I mainly used the watercolor tool to do shading on the skin. I think the application turned out smoother than the airbrush tool. Is it just me or does her skin look very clean and vibrant than the other girls?

I also tried a different technique to shading her hair by looking up tutorials on how to draw hair. Much different than my previous post on Julia huh? I love the detail in it. I will have to go back and edit the others’ like this.

Please let me know what you think.

-Richelle (artist)

sakevisual: Kansei - We're Not Dead Yet!

Ayu — 2010-08-30T03:17:23+00:00

"Everyone's going to think I'm dead if you don't update!"

Progress update ahoy! For those who have played Jisei (or even those of you who haven't), you probably know that it's the first chapter in a series. The question on everyone's lips is "When will the next chapter be out!?" The answer is "Not yet." But we ARE hard at work on it. We've gotten some wonderful feedback on the first chapter, and we're striving to incorporate your thoughts into the second chapter to make an even better game. A huge thanks to everyone for all the comments, constructive criticism, and amazing support. Here are a few tidbits about the second chapter for you to enjoy.

Tidbit #01: The name of the game will be "Kansei." (Spelled as 感性 for those of you who are curious.)

Tidbit #02: Kansei will be significantly longer than Jisei. A lot of people felt that Jisei was too short, so the next chapter will have a lot more meat to it. It will be longer on a single play through, and it will have more endings (that aren't terrible, bad, dying endings). Keep in mind that this also means it will take us significantly longer to complete. >.> But hey! More game!

Tidbit #03: We're getting the band back together! If you liked the art or the music in Jisei, then you'll be pleased to know that Kansei is bringing back the same artist and composer. Woooooo~!

More tidbits on the way, but that should hopefully whet your appetite.

sakevisual: Biweekly Poll - This Blog Needs More...

Ayu — 2010-08-30T02:58:20+00:00

Woo! This poll was pretty straightforward. We had 129 votes, and pretty much everyone agrees.

This blog needs more...
Sketches - 65 (50%)
Progress Updates - 116 (89%)
Photos of Stuff - 30 (23%)
Video - 22 (17%)
Cookies - 31 (24%)

I have heard your cries. Expect an update shortly (like in a few minutes). And from now on, I declare every Wednesday to be "Wordcount Wednesday," a day set aside for me to give you the word count of one of the visual novels we're currently working on. The one you get will change each week, but it'll be a semi-useful way for you to know how far along we are. Of course, that only counts words, with nothing about art, music, or anything else in the VN, but at least you'll get a little peek into things.

--

Next up! I've gotten a lot of requests for tutorials on making VNs. I'll be happy to whip up a few basic ones, but I'd like to know what you're most interested in learning. So poll away~

Love in Space: All Party Members Acquired

2010-08-30T00:32:44+00:00

In an RPG, when you finally fill all your party member slots, you know you’re finally in business. Well, all of Homeward’s party member slots are now filled with character graphics. This is a big reason to celebrate… right Sora?

Filed under: Homeward

Mooneater: Remaking Midnight Noize

2010-08-29T21:52:09+00:00

What it says in the title. (Screenshot from the old version)

Maybe some people will remember Midnight Noize, my very first publicly released Ren’Py-VN. It had a German and an English version…the German one is the one you see above. Why did I decide to remake it? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Testing stuff: I want to play around with a few new Ren’Py functions, in real-world examples
The art and writing are embarrassingly bad. I feel guilty for having this float over me like a sword of Damocles x,D
I want to practice. I’ve been writing quite a lot lately, but regular novel/short story format is a bit different. Plus, I can’t afford to mess around too much with the sprites in PH =<
Screw this list, redoing crap is just fun.

The story is easily five times as long now, which actually justifies that single event CG I had in the old version x,D There will be only four endings instead of seven, two of them are written and I’m roughly 4k words into the story…trying to keep it under 10k. I don’t want to go overboard >=< Oh, and before I forget…you can check out WIPs of Mayura’s new sprite on the art blog.

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Manifest Panel Transcript

Katawa Shoujo — 2010-08-29T08:33:21+00:00

Lawls from our IRC channel made a transcript of the Manifest katawa Shoujo Panel, and I (Suriko) edited it. Many, many, many hours later, it's finally done.

Edit: And it's on the forums. Way too long to post here.

» Discuss this post on the forums

Love in Space: In the Game Universe

2010-08-29T07:34:49+00:00

The above screenshot is an actual game play example and not a mock up. All of the buttons on the UI are fully functional, courtesy of Pytom.

Well, now this is finally starting to look like a visual novel at last!

Filed under: Homeward

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: The Sorrows of Young Climatic

Katawa Shoujo — 2010-08-29T03:59:34+00:00

Since the release of Act 1, we've added a new class of visualization to KS, called "cutin CGs". They are basically images somewhere between sprites and CGs, not full screen CGs but also not a part of the bg + sprites system. Artists like doing small, focused pics and they are useful to stick here and there, where script describes an object of particular interest, or something apart from "two people talking to each other" happens.

However, the fascination with these small flavourful pictures has its downsides too. Just because something can be a cutin CG, it doesn't mean it should be. Sometimes the cutin CGs end up causing conflicts with script or direction. Sometimes they are too superfluous. And sometimes... producing art can just become an unexpectedly difficult task, truly the opposite of the nice and refreshing breather that they are supposed to be for the artists. To showcase, here's the woeful story of that one time when Suriko asked climatic to draw a cutin CG. Delta had made a note in the script of a scene where Hanako plays chess against Lilly that it could be nice to have the chessboard depicted, so Suriko goes to climatic for it.

"I note that the chessboard they're using has holes in the middle of each square and pegs on the bottom of the pieces, and has each dark square slightly raised."

That's the description, from game script. It's the kind of chessboard that makes playing easier for blind people, something you'd expect to find at Yamaku. Climatic says "yeah sure, I'll do it", the five words he regrets saying the most this year, and sets out to work. This task proves to less simple than what it would seem to be. In fact, turns out it's very complex, one could even describe the effort required to make a chessboard that meets climatic's own standards "colossal" or perhaps "gargantuan". First, climatic quickly models the board in 3d because the raised squares make its geometry a bitch at the angle he's drawing.

<climatic> asdfasdga
<climatic> agfakfhgadrgra

However, once he moves to the painting phase, every single one of those raised squares still has to be drawn individually, and despite having the model helping, it's excruciatingly detailed and exhausting work.

<climatic> AAAAAAA

After the board is complete, it needs the set of pieces. 32 pieces of 12 different kinds, each has to be drawn individually. And now, every single of those pieces and every single one of those raised squares needs to be lighted (individually) and shaded, you guessed it, individually.

<climatic> there is no end in sight
<climatic> for this fucing cg
<climatic> askdjkj

All in all completing the chessboard takes almost three months (mostly because massive lack of motivation, understandably), and it's only completed because climatic finally gets so frustrated that he refuses to finish it.

<climatic> goddamn
<climatic> ahsdd
<climatic> adsnkljlgf
<climatic> I do not care anymore

Luckily the board itself is fine by now and moekki quickly adds some effect layers on it to finalize it and it's ready to be inserted in the game. However! At this stage we find out that there's been several critical communication breaks and incomplete information relayed to climatic. Turns out delta has meanwhile directed the scene so that the cutin is not really needed, but never removed the request. Also, not only the chessboard doesn't fit the description (it's missing the holes) but also is heavily inconsistent with another pic of the same chessboard that already is in the game. So now climatic has spent three months drawing a picture that doesn't fit its description in the game and doesn't fit the second image of it in the game. Also it doesn't fit in the game. This hopefully teaches you to check and doublecheck with everyone involved before you even cough in the direction of game files.

<climatic> thank you for wasting several hours of my life, suriko
<climatic> I need to go stick my head in an oven

Not to worry! Moekki edits the second image of the chessboard to fit climatic's cutin CG (she has to redo it twice because she forgets to save), weee adds the holes in the cutin itself and delta tweaks the scene direction so that everything plays more or less together.

And the end result after all this blood, sweat and tears?

Wow! All that effort paid off tenfold. There's a bunch of other cut in CGs in the game, such as this cute plushie Hisao wins for Shizune at the school festival (I call it the Eggplant Cat)...

... or this mysterious box!

...I guess if development always went smoothly there would be nothing to blog about.

» Discuss this post on the forums

Super-Six-Three - Lucky Rabbit Reflex Devblog: Brushing Away the Cobwebs

Chensterrain — 2010-08-28T13:18:06+00:00

I like how after all this talk of inordinate amounts of free time, I abandon the blog for like, four months. Oops! I honestly apologise to anyone watching this place for the complete and utter lack of updates, but rest assured, I've actually been working far more on the game than ever before, and progress is going very smoothly. With the current word count in the vicinity of 90,000 words (and counting!) this is shaping up to be a pretty long game! I've also been reading up on my fashion mags, and have added a ton of new clothes and accessories to the game, along with new events, CGs and dates. Huzzah!

The down side to this, of course, is that working on Lucky Rabbit Reflex takes up most of my time, to the point where I can't really justify spending so much time on the game without charging for the finished product. I honestly do feel guilty and apprehensive about charging money for the game, which I had originally intended to be a free English alternative to the Tokimeki Memorial games, and for anyone following this blog in the hopes of getting a free game at the end of it all, I truly am sorry. That said, charging for the game would allow me to pay for music and fonts and all those other slick, professional things (and also food! Graduate life is hard D:), so I'd really appreciate comments from anyone reading this blog - would you be prepared to spend $20 or thereabouts on a Tokimeki-style dating sim? What do you expect from a $20 indie game, in terms of length, polish, extras and so on? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Image Time!

New clothes menu! ...Again. Fashions change from season to season, so you might have to hurry if you want that dress you've had your eye on...

...Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Let's all go to the movies... to buy ourselves some snacks!~

...So yeah. Hopefully I'll be able to release a demo with all of this new content at some point in the near future, so watch this space!

...Hopefully.

sakevisual: AnimeFest Schedule Up!

Ayu — 2010-08-28T08:43:54+00:00

To those of you in Dallas, or otherwise planning to attend AnimeFest next weekend, please drop by and say hi to us. We'll be running a panel on making visual novels and you have TWO shots at seeing us (yay). Both panels cover making VNs from the planning stages to releasing your game. If you can't come, tell any local friends to come instead. We love having people. ^-^

Friday 4:00pm
Sunday 9:00am

We'll also be in the dealer's room all weekend selling fun stuff and giving away whatever I feel like. See the above video for a preview of the plushies we'll be selling.

Studio Mugenjohncel: Lucy, Eileen and… LUCY!!?… What’s going on!?…

2010-08-27T06:07:38+00:00

Too early for spoilers but…

Double the trouble, Double the Fun… well, except for Eileen…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Studio Mugenjohncel: Things are slowly taking shape now… GUI done… time to create BG-CG’s and other graphical resources for Lucy’s RE-Venge …again

2010-08-26T03:44:56+00:00

So here I am… doing what supposed to be is a remake of my old project Lucy’s Revenge… OK… so it’s not a remake… it’s actually a sequel… No kidding really…

Anyway… GUI is now done (ah… I love me reusable template) and here are previews (I love my English)…

Not much technical marvel here. For this project, I’m gonna have to rely on reusable image-map template… I seriously love the new Screens (and it’s documentation) and the potential they hold but I’m still learning how to use them but the lack of an example which I could dissect makes learning them slightly slower since I learn faster using copy and paste method (yeah… I’m a slow learner without working examples… my fault)… Lol. I seriously wish Doomfest would release an unarchived version of his awesome screen based GUI preferably with comments (since I doubt I’ll understand that wall of text he wrote without comments) so I can also be as awesome as him… oh envy much… oh well…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Winter Wolves: New Planet Stronghold Alpha ready!

2010-08-25T11:39:25+00:00

The download links are the same:
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.exe
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.zip
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.tar.bz2

Note that since I updated to the latest stable Ren’Py release (6.11) I was forced to give up autoupdating from older versions. So you have to redownload this whole thing again, even if you downloaded previous versions. Sorry about that.

From now on I plan to use the autoupdater for all the next updates. Unless I get many users having troubles with it, in that case I probably will give up with that system. But so far only a minority had troubles with the autopatcher and the previous version was more buggy than it is now!

The things improved are MANY. The most visible is battle feedback, with each damage type represented on the battle, and several minor improvements like the ability to attack by just clicking at the enemy target (much faster than using the Attack button every time). Another major change is the difficulty level. You can choose between 3 different levels:

easy – what casual player should choose. Pick this if you’re more interested in reading the story than actually having fun with the battles. This is NOT recommended to anyone even a bit familiar with RPG or more complex games
normal – what I suggest to use. The really difficult battles won’t be many, especially in the Alpha so far, since fights get tougher as the game story goes on. Also, while you’re in the base you’ll start each battle with HP/PP fully restored. This might change in future though (for sure if you get outside)
hard – if you’re familiar with RPG, you must pick this option. Seriously. Otherwise you won’t have any fun in the easier modes. In this setting, even if you should be able to pass most battles, you might face some difficulties in keeping all the heroes alone, or have to change strategy in certain fights

the difficulty influences enemy attacks, hit points, the number of skill points you get when leveling up, and several minor things.

Regarding the plot, you get to know almost all the main characters, and get new quests. Though you can’t finish any quest for now in the Alpha, you can make progress in some. I have also changed the quest system: before it sued a True/False method, meaning that you could either succeed or fail a quest. Now, you can fail it, but to solve a quest you need to complete several steps in sequence, which is a method more interesting and that increases game longevity.

You’ll also be able to see how the level up works before finishing the alpha

That’s it, if you find any bug or have any suggestion, you can reach me on twitter, email, forums. However the preferred method is in my forums, since this way everyone can see the discussion and make suggestions/remarks about what is being said.

Love in Space: Two Definitions

2010-08-25T04:03:41+00:00

800×600 (click for real size)

1280×720 (click for real size)

To be super modern, I thought I’d develop Homeward in 1280×720, 720p HD resolution, only to realize that all making the screen wider did was take the focus away from the characters and give it to the lame filtered background. Bah, so much for technological progress. =_=

For now, I think I’ll just develop both versions on ren’py and see which one ends up looking better once the UI and the text is put in… I dunno, which one do you like better?

Filed under: Homeward

My daily journey: La tortura

2010-08-24T20:05:14+00:00

Dear diary,

Today I discovered a terrible fact: I can't draw worth a damn.

Why do they all look so complacent?

ARRRGGG... How am I supposed to draw fine battle sprites TT___TT ??! *cries rivers of tears* ...
Also, I friended myself. I didn't know I could do that. Guess I am a friend of myself now at LJ (this sounds so silly, ahah).

Project Memoria: It’s morphing time!

2010-08-24T18:42:42+00:00

Can you spot the difference in this image of 5 Julias (NSFW)?

While I was creating clothing for Julia, I was using the second image as reference as how her clothing should fit. Then I realized there was much awkwardness on the bottom half of her body; this was also brought to my attention from a comment in an older post.

So a I fixed the position of her legs to give more balance… Then decided to tame her hair a bit! Ah! XD All I need is to put her glasses on! Like myself, I always forget or lose my own glasses! That will be next on my “to do” list for Julia.

Anyway, I’ll leave you off with another NSFW image of how Julia looks like next to Mikaela and Tristina I here. Constructive criticism welcomed!

-Richelle (artist)

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Katawa Shoujo Panel at Manifest (Now in TechniAudio!)

Katawa Shoujo — 2010-08-24T10:37:12+00:00

As most of you probably know by now Suriko and I attended the Manifest Anime Convention this weekend, where Cemex asked us to come and do a panel.

I'll admit, judging on previous panels that I've been on, I wasn't expecting much. Considering that KS is a niche market of a niche market of a niche market I figured that there would be all of about 3 people that were going to show up.

So when people started piling IN to the panels room as Suriko and I were setting up I was just a little surprised (Suriko edit: And all the more surprised when a good 90% of people there already knew about KS).

Full Disclosure: Neither Suriko or I really bothered practicing for the panel. Well, at least I didn't (Suriko edit: I didn't either). Thankfully a good half of the audience knew what I was talking about from the get-go, and that made it easy.

I won't go into the details of the panel too much; all of that is there in cold, hard, MP3-encoded 1's and 0's, however I would like to say a couple of things.

Firstly, thanks to Manifest for inviting and hosting us. They even went to the trouble of getting the presentation past the Australian Censorship Board (quite possibly the strictest Board outside of China). We were rated "MA" (15 years) but were told that we were "Quite Tame". Woot.

The number of people was quite inspiring, really. And thanks to you all too; it was good to see a couple of you getting vocal and no-one falling asleep. One thing that threw me was a couple of questions about the game that were a bit further reaching than "What's Misha's Disability?" (although I had an answer for that prepared).

To the guys that wanted copies of the game I will get those out to you next week. To the guys that gave us thumbs-up, that's cool too.

All in all it was fun. Actually meeting a couple of you has inspired me a little, and hopefully the other devs that are listening will be a little inspired (and entertained). And for those of you that listen to this online I hope it gives you a bit of an insight to the way we work (as if the blog post up to today weren't enough).

In addition to listening the recording here, you can also download it for your iPod or whatever.

Here's the presentation. Please note it's in Powerpoint 2007 format (if you don't have Office 2007, you can download a free Powerpoint Viewer 2007 from Microsoft's site).

- Crud (and Suriko)

» Discuss this post on the forums

Project Memoria: Poll #3 – Names of Memoria’s Heroines

2010-08-23T20:09:27+00:00

Been a while since I created a poll, eh?

One of the nicest things about writing a story is giving your characters names. It’s kind of like naming your own children.

I’ll be honest, I’m VERY much fascinated by people’s names, particularly female names. If you haven’t noticed already, all of Memoria’s heroines have names ending in “-a” since I feel they make the girls more attractive. Likewise, how a name is said and spelled gives me a first impression of a character. Like Aurelia – think about why I gave her that name (read about her in the “Characters” page).

In Julia’s case, well, I gave her that name more for personal reasons which I’ll not get into here.

Anyway, which Memoria heroine has the most pleasing/prettiest name? Consider how it’s spelled and pronounced. (added in pronunciation guide for potentially difficult names to say)

View This Poll
online survey

Story-wise, I’m hoping by the end of this month (Aug 31) I’ll get Aurelia’s parts done. Then it’s route writing time!

Also, I’m planning to change this blog’s design (as well as my Pixæl Works site) since I’m feeling kind of bored with the layout. Expect something new in the next month

-Ryne (project manager)

Love in Space: On the Nick of Time

2010-08-23T02:54:14+00:00

Completed Nonami’s first base sprite. And not a moment too soon, I might add. I’m going to go back to school tomorrow, so I won’t have as much free time to work on the project any more. Too bad, but it’s as expected.

Filed under: Homeward

Magical Girl Studios: The Post About Stitled, Nasty-Ass Dialogue

Sammy — 2010-08-22T14:23:36+00:00

Okay folks, a bit of a rant here.

There's nothing that bothers me more than bad dialogue. You know what I'm talking about. The type of dialogue that reads like this:

Sam: But Jill, I know that you and your father have been wanting to move away from here for a while, but there's no way you have the money to leave now!

Jill: I don't have a choice, Sam. It's either leave now or have Grandpa come back and stab us in the back again! We may be poor, but we're not going to let ourselves be taken advantage of so easily!

Okay.

Have you EVER heard human beings speak like this? Technically, the sentences are fine! Grammatically correct and everything. But DEAR GOD how they sound like robots.

Real humans converse with much fewer words, especially in English. Not only that, but both Sam and Jill speak exactly the same way. There's no difference in their language, in the words they choose, in the length and density of their sentences.

A rewritten, better version of this exchange:

Sam: Look Jill, I know you want to get out of here, but you really don't have the money right now.

Jill: I don't care. Sam, I can't stick around waiting for Grandpa to stab us in the back again. Just because we don't have any money doesn't mean we're gonna let anybody take advantage of us.

See? Don't they sound MUCH more like humans? But I bet we could make this better. Let's make Sam a high-end kinda guy - maybe a fancy attorney, and Jill his trailer-park-resident high-school sweetheart.

Sam: Jill, listen. I know you want to get out of here, but you just don't have the money to move.

Jill: I don't care! What am I supposed to do, stick around waiting for Grandpa to come and stab us in the back again? Me and Dad are getting out of here whether we got any money or not, Sam. We're poor, not suckers.

Hey! This is fun! Let's try it another way. Sam is Jill's nervous subordinate at a shipping warehouse and Jill is his immediate supervisor. Let's say their relationship is an amicable one, but Sam is still a little nervous about speaking up to Jill.

Sam: Jill, I just...I don't know... I get why you wanna get out, but - I don't know - do you really have the money to move right now?

Jill: I don't really care. We aren't letting my Grandpa take advantage of us anymore. I'm tired of getting stabbed in the back, and so's Dad. So that's it - we're outta here.

Or my favorite! TEENAGERS. 3 Teenagers speak with even FEWER formal parts of speech than adults and use a lot of slang/shortenings. HOWEVER, they don't sound like Jersey Shore obsessed fluff brains all the time. Observe:

Sam: I dunno, like, it doesn't sound like you have enough money to move.

Jill: Don't care - Grandpa's been totally stabbing me and Dad in the back for years. So now we're doing something about it. We're poor, not stupid.

So yeah.

Basic lesson: dialogue is SUPER important and it ticks me off when people write it crappy. I mean seriously - you talk everyday and hopefully, people talk back at you. LISTEN. Maybe even eavesdrop on a conversation and write it down. See how real people talk. It'll be a big help.

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Katawa Shoujo Manifest Trailer: Spin

Katawa Shoujo — 2010-08-22T12:14:13+00:00

Crud and Suriko held their KS panel at the Manifest anime convention in Melbourne, Australia today. First impressions were that it went "all right, I guess", good job! A part of the panel was this snazzy video trailer, and there's an audio recording incoming later along with the panel report. Enjoy.

» Discuss this post on the forums

Love in Space: The Many Faces of Nonami Kitahara

2010-08-22T04:10:14+00:00

First order of business. I gave Sora a redesign. The original design didn’t look like a little sister character, and so went imouto-moudo to create this.

“S-stupid artist, screwing up my original design…”

Today was mostly a Nonami day. This is her in her kendo uniform. She looks a bit older and more serene with a ponytail… but don’t let that fool you. She’s still a genki girl.

Nonami’s base pose.

With variations.

“We can do it!”

“Lalalala…”

Filed under: Homeward

Love in Space: Just Kidding

2010-08-21T17:47:58+00:00

Of course I was just joking when I posted those sketches of the characters. You really think I would release a game where everyone had Chun-Li sized thighs? I was just…. trying to test your art critiquing skills, that’s all! Here are the real sketches!

XD…….

Filed under: Homeward

Mooneater: Redesigning Shoujo X

2010-08-21T15:05:39+00:00

I’m still chugging along with writing.

The game contains 131 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 2,630 words,
for an average of 20.1 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

As you can see, it’s already twice as much as last time! >=>

Redesigning a side character.

At this point in time, I don’t touch any of the main character designs anymore xD But my side charas are subject to change. Shoujo X (whose name is not really secret, but I like the air of mystery) is one of those. I’m still not satisfied with this. Hmm.

Love in Space: Homeward: All About It

2010-08-21T09:51:46+00:00

It has been eight years since Saionji Riku left Japan. After losing his childhood home, he has lived in so many different places that he has forgotten what it is even like to live in a single place for more than a year. However, when his divorced mother falls ill in Japan, he must return to his old hometown to take care of his estranged younger sister. A reunion with a childhood friend and the meeting of a new classmate fills Riku’s formerly lonely days with newfound happiness. However, can his friends truly teach Riku what it means to have a home?

Homeward is a Japanese styled nakige (“crying game”) featuring a dramatic plot in the style of animes like Kanon, Toradora, and Clannad. Featuring three endings and hours of game play, it will be one of the longest ren’ai games ever originally released in English once completed. Due to story pivotal late game sexual content, the game will be rated 18+ and a general ages version will not be released.

Saionji Riku
The protagonist and narrator of the story. After moving from his home in his childhood, he has lived in places all across the world. However, after losing all of his friends every time time he has moved, he is reluctant to meet new people. While having a quiet personality, deep inside, he harbors a great loneliness and wishes for someone to reach out to him.

Kitahara Nonami
A friend from Riku’s childhood. Nonami has a cheerful and energetic personality and never lets herself get down. While she may to be the opposite of Riku in terms of personality, he feels the closest to her because of their time together during their childhoods.

Nakamiya Haruka
Nonami’s best friend and the class representative of Riku’s class. Haruka has a much more shy and quiet personality compared to Nonami, but is much more reliable and caring than her. Intelligent, beautiful, and from a rather rich family, she’s a girl who most people consider an impossible dream.

Saionji Sora
Riku’s estranged younger sister. They were raised separately since nearly birth and have only met briefly three times before in their lives. She harbors a great dislike for her mother and has a bitter and angry personality. Deep down however, she longs for someone who can save her from her loneliness and has a horrible fear of being abandoned.

OMAKE!!!

What the girls of Homeward looked like when they were in elementary school, brought to you by the courtesy of H.C. Staff. Cute makes right!

Filed under: Homeward

Love in Space: The Final Numbers for the Script

2010-08-20T21:47:31+00:00

Approximate number of days Homeward has been in production: 131 days
Final word count: 92 242 words
Samu’s average overall writing pace: 702 words a day
Samu’s average writing pace in Japan: 723 words a day
Samu’s average writing pace on vacation in US: 1086 words a day
Approximate read time for 100% completion: 3 hours
Number of endings: 3

Filed under: Homeward

Love in Space: 92 242

2010-08-20T09:59:35+00:00

The game contains 9020 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 92 242 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.

It is done. Over. Finished.

I thought I would be elated when this moment came, but now that I’ve actually done it, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that the script could still be improved in some way… Almost like I’m about to blast off a rocket into outer space and I’m freaking out that I’ve forgotten some pivotal detail that might cause it to explode during lift off.

But I know that everything went as planned. By all observations, it looks like a great story with a lot of fun characters that I wouldn’t mind dating myself. So I’ll try not to worry and just celebrate the fact that this journey is over.

The Nonami Arc turned out being just 800 words shorter than the Haruka Arc, so I think they’re approximately equal lengths. The script for Homeward is also about 7000 words short of the grand 100 000 mark. Somewhat disappointing that I couldn’t reach all the way, but the story I wanted to tell is complete and adding anything more to it will probably be gratuitous.

More information will be posted tomorrow… Right now, I am burnt out and exhausted. I’m headed for bed now. See you.

Filed under: Homeward

Winter Wolves: Minisurvey about VN/Dating sims results

2010-08-20T08:28:35+00:00

Disclaimer: speaking with some friends who knows more about statistics than me, they said that the data collected might be not really reliable. I know, I made it mostly for fun with no intention of providing the “ultimate guide to make visual novels” for game developer

However, from my personal experience (I’ve made many VN/Dating Sims in past 3 years) I have to admit was quite surprised by the results, because they match completely my experience regarding which games sells more. The data collected comes mostly from Lemmasoft, Amaranthia, my own twitter, my forums, and indiegamer forums.

The total people who answered is 126, but recently has been progressing of only 1 new person a day, so I guess is time to draw conclusiong and post results.

I’ve made a PNG image of the final result, so anyone can link to it or share it easily, look on the right side of this post for the clickable thumbnail. As you can see, the standard Otome and Bish?jo are the most popular genres (well, no surprise here). As for art-style, detailed manga (I suppose like Heileen, Bionic Heart) wins hands on over all other art genres. People don’t like american comic style and cartoon style (I wish I did this survey before making Vera Blanc, I would have used manga art for that game too!).

As for setting, again no surprise: fantasy settings are always the most popular in any kind of games, not just VN/Dating Sims, so really I expected that. The other settings are more or less equivalent, only the modern drama/slice of life is slightly more popular (and yes, sci-fi isn’t much popular!).

Sexyness in games is a bit surprising, and probably the result less reliable IMHO. From my experience is always safer to go with family friendly (if you’re interested in maximizing revenues) for the simple fact that most big portal/sites wouldn’t accept your game otherwise. If you are making the game just as hobby or with direct sales in mind only, then you can ignore it So far most of my games fall into the 2nd category from top, sexy stuff, but I have many family friendly games coming out next. One day I would like to make a very sexy, almost erotic game though. Maybe when I have enough funds to make Bionic Heart 2 as I have in mind of doing it.

The extras question is really a surprise. And I believe is very accurate: Most people don’t want to mix genres. If they want to play a minigame, they can find plenty of them in casual games. I really think VN/dating sims should focus more on typical dating sims elements and statistics. Or just let the players to read the story. You can also argue that if you put too many minigames in a VN, then it isn’t a real VN anymore but a “game with a story” It’s somewhat hybrid territory here.

“What is most important” result is also interesting. The most important thing is WRITING! Not art, as I was always thinking. Also, the starting idea, and I agree completely. If the starting idea is good, and the writing too, you have all the elements needed for a good VN. That’s the reason why I’m not personally writing my future games anymore
Also is interesting that most people don’t care about voice overs. I had already given up on that because of too many unreliable voice-artists, and the result somehow comforts me. People don’t seem to care too much about the number of endings as well. Maybe better to make a more linear story, but longer to play ?

Based on the next question, “Do you really replay dating sim/visual novels to see all the possible endings?” it really seems so. Not many people are obsessed about unlocking all endings, apparently. I sort of agree since I do the same. I did the same also for AAA titles like Dragon Age / mass effect 2. I simply went to youtube and looked for videos for the other possible endings

About the remaining results, people seems to like game series (after a slow start I am now getting good results with Heileen 1+2 bundles), most people use a PC to play, and they don’t seem too much enthusiast about the idea of having to be connected to play a game.

That’s all! Again, this is not the holy-bible-of-VNs, but I found the results quite interesting and in many cases matching my own experience.

It means that you should all make fantasy based VN with stats and RPG elements? Well no, I believe that any game that is GOOD can sell: is your choice if you want to try to appeal mainstream (but have more competition) or niches (smaller market but much less competition). Personally I’d like to see more horror VNs, for example!

Ren'Py Announcements: Ren'Py 6.11.0 Released

renpytom — 2010-08-20T00:43:35+00:00

Ren'Py 6.11.0 "It Goes to Eleven" is a major release of Ren'Py. Six months in the making and with about one-quarter of Ren'Py new or changed, it adds two major features, along with a number of minor features and bug fixes.

The first major new feature is OpenGL accelerated rendering, allowing Ren'Py to take advantage of the GPU to render the screen. Apart from the speed improvement provided, Ren'Py games can now be scaled on the fly, by resizing the window. Other advantages are that fullscreen games are displayed with the proper aspect ratio, and Ren'Py will synchronize to the screen's vertical refresh, preventing tearing on properly configured systems.

The second major new feature is the new screen system, which supersedes layouts, overlay functions, imagemaps, and most other means of customizing the out-of-game menus and the in-game screens. The screen system allows you to use a language to add any supported function to any screen.

In addition to these major features:

* Transforms were rewritten to make the more composeable and better-integrated.
* New style and transform properties were added.
* A new LiveTile displayable was added.
* Python and FFmpeg were updated.
* Ren'Py was made more correct, configurable, and better performing.

Downloads of 6.11.0 and a full release announcement can be found at:

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/releases/6.11.0

Studio Mugenjohncel: Playing with Billy Herrington… Figma

2010-08-19T20:38:48+00:00

“Look Mom!… I can explain this… oh wait…“

“…I’d rather not“

“Lol!…”

Anyway, this is me playing with Billy Herrington, you could find more about him here…

I think I should stop now before I get any more ideas…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Studio Mugenjohncel: Oh boy now comes… another dilema… and once again, it involves Eileen…

2010-08-19T11:14:52+00:00

OK let’s see… a few hours ago… someone that goes by the name of Ren (thanks!) commented and pointed out a rather critical flaw on the Eileen sprites I posted in the previous post. Of course I made the corrections but I’m also bored today and played with the sprite. Before I know it, I already finished making another hair set for Eileen, and for some odd reason it closely resembles here default hair. What’s even odd is that… it kinda looked well… cute…

I love the curly messed up hair of Eileen but damn… I just can’t seem to take away my eyes from this (now even cuter) version of Eileen… it’s not supposed to be a problem but I already made at least 5 event sprites using the curly messed up hairdo…

Oh my, what am I supposed to do now?… oh well… I’ll think about it later…

Love in Space: T-Minus Six… Five… Four…

2010-08-19T09:47:57+00:00

The game contains 8642 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 88138 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.
4862 words remaining

THE END IS NIGH! @_@

Filed under: Homeward

Studio Mugenjohncel: And now comes the most dangerous part… making Eileen sprites for Lucy’s Re-Venge

2010-08-19T00:43:52+00:00

Ah… Eileen, Ren’py’s mascot and representative. It’s been so long since the release of the original Lucy’s Revenge and Ren’py has evolved from a simple VN engine to a potential replacement for Powerpoint (Ah!… that rich multimedia capabilities). It’s features increased over the years… features that I could exploit and parodize (is this even an English word?)

Here we have the sprite for Eileen and you’ll notice that something is quite different with this Eileen. Not only is her hair different but she now has this combination of perky and dorky aura to her. And the hair… that hair… never liked Eileen’s default and somewhat boring hairdo, it’s just so… plain so might as well take liberty and “mess” it a bit…

Now about Eileen’s role here. Yes, it will still be like the same from the previous game with a few megabytes added and an epilogue and prologue and… a conclusion. Not gonna spoil you on this one… Lol…

Now casting Eileen in a VN game is not as easy as drawing sprite and write script… oh no, a lot has to be taken into consideration. The First and probably most important thing to consider here is that she’s Ren’py’s official mascot and representative so even though I have a fully strip-pable (all the way) sprite here, I can’t show her go all strip and bare suddenly (think of the children) since as stated earlier Eileen, as the representative of Ren’py must maintain her somewhat wholesome image… oh well…

That’s all for now…

Love in Space: T-Minus Eight… Seven…

2010-08-18T08:35:13+00:00

Everyone seems to be talking about game length today. As you can see from the word count, Homeward has a pretty epic length script. I’m not going to stop working on this game until I’ve told the full stories of all three of the heroines, so I don’t really care how long it turns out being as long as I feel like all of the girls have gotten their fair share of the spot light. That explains why I’m aiming for a final script length of 93 000 words, since that’s how many words it’ll take to make Nonami’s arc roughly the same length as Haruka’s arc.

The game contains 8403 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 85812 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.
7188 words remaining

Filed under: Homeward

Ehe~ Progress Blog: Uh, your hair… it’s kind of…

2010-08-18T03:17:26+00:00

^Well, since I decided to have a quote for every post, here you go. The quote from the last post was already edited out of the script, so I’m not sure you will see any of these in the actual game. Anyway, I read Winter Wolves’ post on game length and decided to make a [...]

sakevisual: Biweekly Poll - Online Games

Ayu — 2010-08-17T22:48:10+00:00

Wow, these weeks brought in a fantastic 246 votes. I owe you guys a little dance. XD Also, sorry for the lateness of the post. I've been flying around the world and I just got back. >.>

If you haven't seen it yet, Ripples now has an online player version. This lovely update coincides perfectly with the subject of our latest poll. : D

This poll, we had some great discussion about playing visual novels online versus downloadables.

I prefer free VNs to be online - 71 (28%)
I prefer free VNs to be downloadable - 196 (79%)
I prefer commercial VNs to be online - 14 (5%)
I prefer commercial VNs to be downloadable - 119 (48%)
Anything's fine with me - 51 (20%)

More people voted for free VNs over commercial ones. No surprise. XD It also seems that if the game is free, people are fine with either free or online. The real issue comes when the the game starts costing money. I've heard some pretty interesting arguments for why people wouldn't want to pay for a game to play online. Any thoughts in the opposite direction? Any who don't care either way?

--

New poll is a little different. What do you guys want to see more of in this blog? Yup. That's it. If what you like isn't on the list, just leave a comment. Whee~

Magical Girl Studios: The Post About Why Size Does(n't) Matter

Sammy — 2010-08-17T21:40:41+00:00

So today is apparently a day for Indie Game Developers to write articles about game length and how it often plays into how a game's received. "It's too short" is a common complaint indie games often receive. And while I'm not a true indie-developer just yet, I think I have something to say that I haven't seen in the other responses.

From what I've seen from other posts (linked below), the general consensus is that size doesn't matter, and in fact, longer games are often WORSE because they are often full of padding. People have cited JRPGs that run up to forty five hours as opposed to wonderful indie titles that only run two hours. "I appreciated the latter so much more!" is the general consensus, and so you should!

If the 45 hour game honestly sucked.

Here's how I break this argument down: Size doesn't matter. What matters is how you feel once you're finished with the game.

Now when I say "finished" I don't necessarily mean you've beaten the story and unlocked every super l33t X-Box live achievement and can tell me exactly how many mobs spawn in the Dungeons of Solitude Basement Level 3. I mean, when you personally have finished your experience with the game.

It's much easier to finish a 2 hour title than it is to finish a 45 hour one. If you finished the 2 hour title and feel unfulfilled, you will most likely go to the first thought that crosses your mind "It was too short." I mean, if your experience wasn't what you expected and the end credits are rolling, more often than not, you'll feel like it could've been what you wanted if it were only a bit longer. You were hooked by the exposition, enjoyed the characters, but felt it just wasn't enough. It ended too soon.

As for the 45 hour game, more often than not, if you're not digging it, you'll quit by the 10 hour mark and claim "it wasn't interesting enough to keep me engaged, it must've been full of padding". But, to be fair, you've played more hours on the 45 hour game than you have on the 2 hour game. How do you know if the 2 hour game wouldn't have left you with the same impression if it had been 10 hours long?

What I'm trying to get at is this: as long as the game feels finished and fulfilling, the length is accurate. If it feels too short, the story hasn't been fully explored and there's a pacing problem. If it feels too long, there needed to be cuts - the story dragged and, once again, there's a pacing problem.

On the whole, I prefer more over less. Not because I like my video games with repetitive, dull tasks or boring sub-plots, but because I love more good story. A short good story with awesome, fun game play is GREAT! A long good story with awesome, fun game play is better just cause there's more. I am an ardent believer in "two scoops are better than one" (as long as said scoops of imaginary ice cream don't have any calories. XD).

I'm not a true indie developer just yet. Read the peeps below for a real developer's insight. These are just my two cents on the subject.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=810
http://24caretgames.com/2010/08/16/does-game-length-matter/
http://2dboy.com/2010/08/12/too-short/
http://blog.wolfire.com
http://brokenrul.es/blog
http://gamesfromwithin.com/size-matters
http://macguffingames.com/2010/if-size-doesnt-matter-where-do-you-get-the-virtual-goods
http://mile222.com/2010/08/a-haiku-about-game-length/
http://nygamedev.blogspot.com/2010/08/coming-up-short.html
http://retroaffect.com
http://the-witness.net/news
http://www.copenhagengamecollective.org/2010/08/17/size-does-matter/
http://www.firehosegames.com/2010/08/how-much-is-enough/
http://www.hobbygamedev.com/
http://spyparty.com/2010/08/16/size-doesnt-matter-day/

Winter Wolves: How long is it?

2010-08-17T12:47:59+00:00

Today many other indies like cliffski are making a post about the “game length” problem. Indeed, a question I often heard in forums when talking about games is “How long is it”? Like if long=good!

I know this well because I make games that, typically, are very short to play, since they’re story-based and are very similar to books, movies, comics. I think it’s totally absurd to judge a game by the length (unless it lasts 15 minutes of course!!!). For several reasons, most of them already very well explained by Cliff.

Making some comparison: you’d rather watch a dull, boring long movie, or a short but exciting, innovative, interesting one? This might look like an idiot question (and, it is) but then, why some people complain about games length, IF the game story is good? (I’m talking specifically about VN/dating sims).

One of the best recent examples is the game Jisei by Sakevisual. The game IS short. If you play it all at once, will last an hour or so. Yet, has an interesting plot, has high production values and good voice acting. You would rather play a very long but banal visual novel instead? Of course I know you might say: I want an interesting AND long story. Well, that’s what everyone would like to play, but since writing VN is like writing a book or a comic, you can well imagine that is not easy at all to make a story at same time interesting AND long.

On the opposite, there are many examples in tv-series that insisted on length (starting a new season when they should have stopped) and the result was that they produced a very crap result, reducing the overall interest of their fans.

Beside, most new games that comes out are based on the MMORPG/social system. Basically to make each action you must wait several minutes, or repeat certain tasks. While those games are fun, especially at the beginning (I played a lot Everquest for example), after a while they’re super boring, and really would be better shorter but with better gameplay/variety.

Just yesterday I wanted to buy a game on steam. I browsed all the various FPS, but I found really nothing interesting and ended up buying an adventure game (Alter Ego) because I enjoyed the atmosphere, description, the quality. I am still playing it so not sure how long it is, but for sure I’m enjoying it much more than any of those all-identic FPS games that comes out today.

Love in Space: T-Minus Nine

2010-08-17T09:03:12+00:00

The game contains 8255 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 83935 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.
9065 words remaining

Filed under: Homeward

My daily journey: ...and I want to credit those awesome sites for making my life easier.

2010-08-16T21:40:22+00:00

I know my livejournal is becoming unbearable and boring because lately all I talk is about my Visual Novel project. Sadly, I don't have nothing to talk about besides that because that's all I've been working on! I'm sorry... painting all those pictures really consumes my time :( .

Currently I have 6 finished pictures for my VN. Now I'm designing new characters and trying to draw backgrounds :< .

Statistics:

The game contains 143 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 1569 words,
for an average of 11.0 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

Humm... After finishing my sketches I will try to add menus.
Of course since I'm a poor writer the dialogues are utterly dreadful...

ALSO, I MADE A LOGO:

... it has BUTTERFLIES on it. I hope you all like it! The font I used is called papyrus but the little letters are written in rage Italic.

About the music:
Since all those drawings have been literally eating my life sadly I will not compose any music. I will just use music from those GREAT sites: link, link, link, link and link.
Wow, that's a lot of free music sites... but I'm so glad they exist *_* .

Before I forget I will write this very important link:
http://www.image-maps.com/
It's to map images. It's being extremely useful to me too!

Magical Girl Studios: The Post About Fun Extras That Became the Post About Goals

Sammy — 2010-08-16T13:37:24+00:00

Poll results are in, and most people voted for the "creator commentary, concept art, new content" extra types. A fandisc or extended "non-adult" content also ranked well. I was really happy that no one voted against extras completely! I know that I'M often tempted by extras for my favorite games. Glad to see everyone else is on board with me.

Creator Commentary is one of my favorite things in a game. It's so cool to get that "behind the scenes" look, although I don't really like having to replay the whole game to see the commentary. (Such as in a movie where the commentary is playing over the film). If the game is nearly 10 hours long, replaying it all with creator commentary sorta seems tedious to me.

I'd prefer interview style commentary with the creator, writer, artist, cast, etc. Maybe THAT commentary could be accessed via an "extras" menu that would skip you right to the scene of the game they want to talk about.

ALSO BLOOPERS. Bloopers are my favorite. 3 A must-have if you have VAing in your game.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I am proud to announce that the other day, I finished writing an ending of Project "O". There are still many more endings to go, but finishing the beginning, middle, and end of my script just felt incredible.

The writing is far from over. I'd say I still have a good month of work ahead of me. Not to mention editing. But I'm on my way, and once I achieve my ultimate goal of a 100% finished script, I know I'm going to be on Cloud-9.

Thanks for voting in the poll everybody! I'll keep you guys updated on more progress. :) Can't wait till I have enough to actually show people.

Studio Mugenjohncel: Stealing Art?… I don’t think so Tim!…

2010-08-16T10:24:03+00:00

Before you proceed, please look at these images.

Now read this.

Ahh… Internet… Serious Business or Take it easy… Unless you’re dealing with real money or goods then my default response is “take it easy” since I (admittedly have trolling tendencies) but there were times that I have to make it Serious Business… especially when someone is questioning your integrity and making false accusations… and that’s exactly what Uncle Mugen’s story for today and I wanted to once and for all put an end to this misunderstanding by providing hard evidence and hopefully, reach out for peace and reconciliation…What happened here is someone draw an improved Rough Sketch of Maya done by an Anonymous and his post is here which itself is based on a still rougher sketch of Maya done by Chi (?) and here is his post

Please note that the original drawing have “NO” signature or “NAMES” whatsoever in “BOTH” the original sketch and the improved rough sketch so there is no way I would have know who on earth did these drawings.

And since this is after all a drawthread, I took liberty and used his version and overlayed it while taking some liberty and put a mike in it to spice things up and generally have fun like I always do…

Take note that I acknowledged and recognized his work as you can see by my post here stating that my work is a derivative and here is the final work…

Now after this incident… I suddenly found myself being constantly followed, attacked by someone and accused me of “stealing” and “screwing up” stuff. Here are a few sample of these posts here, here and here (there are more of these)…

Now I don’t want to jump into conclusions about these being from the same person trying to spread false rumors or trying to get back at me or whatever but that doesn’t matter. What really matters is that I didn’t steal “anything” nor am I claiming “that” sketch as my work nor do I have any intention to steal… I draw, have fun and hopefully someone else enjoys my works. Now I know stepped into a few toes than my sincerest apologies… especially to you Chi… I don’t want you to hold grudges against me forever and I prefer being friends with you over anything else (that’s the Uncle Mugen way)… but if they can’t accept it well… that’s not my problem… I’m gonna apologize for trolling (which I admit I do A LOT) but I’m I’m not gonna apologize for something I didn’t do (and that is steal).

Peace… (Lol!… Take it easy…)

Dischan Devblog: Interface demo (video) + Music!

2010-08-16T10:09:18+00:00

A video demo of the functional interface! It took many days of excruciating pain and hundreds of lines of code to make this work. Many thanks to Pytom for making this happen!

Additionally, have a sample song from CombatPlayer for the Cradle-Song soundtrack!

Enjoy.

Winter Wolves: Introducing “Remember Me” Otome game

2010-08-15T09:33:44+00:00

As I wrote in previous posts, I decided to move my otome games production to a more girly site (which I’m still building though). As you can imagine the name “Winter Wolves” doesn’t recall exactly a romantic, cute, girly atmosphere

There are already some games “in progress”, but the first game that is likely going to be released will be called “Remember Me”, and will be a dating sim. I have yet to decide if it will also incorporate a minigame (time management) like the farming sim. If you want let me know your opinion on this with comments or forum posts: should the game be a plain dating sim or have also a minigame?

I don’t want to reveal too much info about it yet, but it will have all the required elements to be a true otome game:

Romance – the game will be VERY romantic. The starting situation already is very romantic even if a bit dramatic.
No Sex – the game will be absolutely family friendly like all the games I’ll release on that new domain/brand. For the men reading, don’t worry, if I can find more reliable writer/artists I plan to make some more male-oriented ones to put them in Tycoon Games website
Manga art – the art will be cute manga, Flower Shop style. I might even combine some comic scenes like Vera Blanc game but still keeping a cute/girly manga style.
Handsome boys to date – there will be plenty of cool, handsome boys to date. Some will be romantic, some will be workaholics, others will be shallow but who knows, maybe with your help they might change their attitude?
Cuteness power - flowers, pets like young kitties and puppies. Poems, romantic situations. You got the idea.
Good writing – I’ll completely outsource the writing so hopefully the quality and style will be much better than my past attempts.

Speaking of this first game, the main character is a sort of homage to a friend developer of mine, Amanda Fitch. Indeed, in this game you’ll control the character of “Amarantha”. A very uncommon name for a girl, it comes from the amaranth flower, which is derived from Greek (amarantos) meaning “unfading”.

She works in a ice cream parlor during summer, she likes to write poems, and her friends call her Amy.

The one below happens right before the main game scene, as you see things doesn’t seem to start particularly well but… with an Otome game the Happy End is guaranteed!

Your gentle touch
The warmth of your embrace
The passion of your kiss
Precious times
That felt ever so divine

I though that they would never leave
But…
Even though I can’t reach you anymore
I can’t open my eyes to find you there
I’ll always have my memories

Though they are not as warm as the hands
That always made me feel so safe
I know they will never disappear
As you now have

My beloved,
My heart is forever yours
Even if you’re lost
Beyond where my trembling voice
Can reach you

Even if your memories fade
Or disappear into the darkness
I’ll never forget the precious times
When we faced the world together

My beloved,
For today,
For tomorrow,
For the days that may never return,
Never forget the words we once exchanged…
“I love you…”

Love in Space: Initiate Final Count Down

2010-08-15T09:02:58+00:00

It has been a long and sometimes difficult journey… but the end is finally in sight. From now on, all script updates will not only be counting up, but also counting down towards the end.

The game contains 8097 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 82402 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.
10598 words remaining

Filed under: Homeward

Project Memoria: Two girls in, one image.

2010-08-14T16:37:06+00:00

Boy do I have a treat for you! Mikaela and Tristina make a pair in(NSFW) today’s post! Ok, well… I just happen to get both their coloring done in one night; And understanding that I lagged lately with posts, I suppose this one be special

Some comments…

Shading skin with Sai is becoming easier. I still have trouble shading hair as far as the placements of lights and darks and the transitions between them; Such as in the strands of hair (I would greatly appreciate suggestions or advice about that).

I learned the importance of shading and adding light as to make eyes smoother and stand out. Check out (NSFW) Tristina’s eyes from my previous post. Also, consistency of eye styles between each characters should be considered; this is important for the style of Anime and also character personality.

- Richelle (artist)

Mooneater: Weekly progress Update No. 1

2010-08-14T10:19:37+00:00

Two scenes written. Prologue is halfway done >=<

The game contains 68 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 1234 words,
for an average of 18.1 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

My daily journey: VISUALNOVELVISUAL NOVEL VISUALNOVEL--

2010-08-12T20:11:28+00:00

I'm sorry if I'm not very active lately. I've been working on my Visual Novel.

SO... I found those awesome codes that animate your characters blinking and lip flapping juuuuust like Phoenix Wright!

REN'PY TUTORIALS:

1. http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/cookbook/Blink_And_Lip_Flap
2. http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7020 <- For better understanding, because the first tutorial lacks vital information like "WHAT ARE ALL THOSE NUMBERS FOR D8 ?"

This is fake Anne's portrait.

When the text stops they stop moving their mouths. AWESOME 8D .
I was just testing out the images and the animation. I haven't draw any backgrounds yet...

Also I asked at Ren'py foruns if it's possible to make a team fight together (instead of one person alone) like this:

(Earthbound example, har har.)

And a person pointed out this project he himself was working on:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7207&start=0

I think my jaw dropped. Is it really possible to make something like this on Ren'py? I'm going to download it now to see how it works o.o ...

Love in Space: I’m Working, I Swear!

2010-08-12T06:37:13+00:00

The game contains 7663 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 78499 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.

If you’re wondering why there’s been so little apparent progress since the last update, it’s because lint is once again misleading. All of the work today was focused on revising what I already wrote of the Sora Arc, so even though I added a lot of content, a lot of other content was also deleted, keeping the overall word count roughly the same.

The Sora arc is unfortunately still roughly 10% shorter than the Haruka arc, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it any more. I’ve added a lot more pro-Sora scenes in the general story arc so their first sex scene is much less out of the blue, and overall, Riku and Sora’s relationship looks sweeter and more genuine than before. I think adding any more content than what’s already there at this point is just going to be redundant, so I better just leave things as they are and start working on the Nonami arc.

Filed under: Homeward

Love in Space: Fixing Sora’s Route

2010-08-11T09:08:51+00:00

The past couple of days have involved making some major changes to the Sora Arc. The biggest thing I did not like about the Sora Arc is that the first sex scene comes way too unexpectedly. I’ve seen enough surprise sex scenes in other games of the same genre and I already know I face palm and laugh at the writer whenever it happens, so I think it’ll be worth the extra time it’ll take to get everything with the Sora Arc just right.

I’m getting pretty close to the big 80 000 mark, and I’ve barely even started on the Nonami Arc before I realized all the things that needed to be fixed in the Sora Arc. Maybe the impossible might happen and Homeward might breach the epic 100 000 word mark once it’s finished. I admit, I never, ever actually imagined that I could write something this long. I’m just glad there’s only a couple more things to do before I’m done.

The game contains 7620 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 78157 words,
for an average of 10.3 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.

Filed under: Homeward

Love in Space: Not Yet

2010-08-10T09:40:28+00:00

Uggghhhh… I realized that I made a pretty major mistake at the beginning of the story. When I was writing the script four months ago, I had absolutely no idea how long the script was actually going to turn out to be. Basically, the problem is that the very first decision the player is given out of the 29 decisions that are in the game is actually the decision that determines whether or not you will be able to play the Nonami arc.

So far, I’ve designed Homeward to be a challenge-less game, meaning that the player will be able to make decisions at his leisure and see how the story unfolds without worrying about bad ends or accidentally locking off one of the character arcs. But this major oversight basically introduces a 50% chance that the Nonami arc may not be playable on the player’s first run through the game, while making the Haruka and Sora arcs accessible no matter what decisions the player make.

The worse part is that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, because the mistake is at the beginning of the story, at the very first decision point in the script. Revising it will require major changes to every part of the script, which isn’t an option any more. No matter how much I don’t like the fact that the first decision in the game determines whether one of the character arcs is available or not, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Consider this the first major mistake that I’m going leave in the game because of budget constraints. Sigh….

I guess Nonami really is going to be the main heroine of Homeward. After all, if her arc is technically the trickiest to unlock, then I guess it just makes her all the more special.

The game contains 7266 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 74793 words,
for an average of 10.3 words per screen.
The game contains 29 menus.

Filed under: Homeward

sakevisual: Ruka Sketch

Ayu — 2010-08-10T04:37:07+00:00

Oneiro is still alive. Writing is progressing pretty well, and I'm here with a character sketch to tease you. XD This is Ruka, the MANLIEST of men.

...

I lied. He's not the manliest of men. But he DOES know how to cook, which is a very manly pursuit. We're working on his sprite right now - I'll post a teaser screencap once it's complete.

Winter Wolves: The revenge of point’n'click adventures

2010-08-09T17:59:51+00:00

I’ve always loved point’n'click adventures, of all kinds. First person view, or 3rd person (with the characters walking on the screen).

Unfortunately I’ve never been able to make one, because they are probably the kind of game that require most art assets. Also, I wasn’t sure that there was a market big enough to justify that kind of investment. However, recently things seems to have changed. Not just indies, but even some bigger studios are starting to produce adventure games, even if most of them are full 3d ones, real-time.

I really don’t like 3d real time. It might be good for certain settings, and surely gives more freedom so you can have very complex puzzles. But still I think 2d painted art is the best you can have in an adventure game. A good solution/compromise is 2d pre-rendered backdrops with 3d real-time sprites though.

Does it means that I’m thinking about making an adventure game? Well, for now I want to finish the current projects. Then, I want to experiment with some online games.

But next year, depending also how some things go, I might start thinking about it seriously (depends also if my favourite artist Rebecca will have enough time to do it)!

In the past I’ve experimented with lots of genres, and still I like to experiment, however the main kind of games I like are story-based games: RPGs, adventures and all the VN variants (dating sim, etc). I believe an adventure based on Vera Blanc character might be interesting, with many puzzles and horror-themed situations (zombies, vampires, and so on).

Now better I stop thinking about it and focus on finishing my current games though! A new alpha of Planet Stronghold should be ready next week for sure (just waiting for artist to finish a few background images).

Studio Mugenjohncel: Upgraded Lucy sprites for her upcoming game

2010-08-09T11:41:03+00:00

I assume I now have your attention (LOL!)… time to go to the real content…

Oh boy… 1 base sprite 3 base sprites to go… In all the time I have spent making OELVN’s, this is the first time I actually slowed down and take time to create sprites with quality in mind and for a good reason… these are sprites for Lucy

So… who is Lucy? Well… she’s the “other” often forgotten rarely remembered ren’py girl… you can read more here… as for me, I dare say she’s one of the main reasons why I managed to stay in this hobby even after I went from happy go lucky no care person to busy all day everyday person. I am after-all… her numero UNO fan!…

I have this strong sense of duty and responsibility to ensure Lucy doesn’t fade into obscurity. The imagemaps which revolutionize the way games are made in Ren’py was first introduced to the world through Lucy (originally introduced by Pytom to make it easier for layman people like me to have beautiful graphics on their VN with minimal programming)… though I have been suspecting for a long time that I am “partially” responsible for her to be “briefly” and unceremoniously dropped from renpy (let’s not talk about that)…

Now where were we?… ah the sprites. Lucy’s debut appearance as a protagonist (antagonist) is Lucy’s Revenge, a parody of what renpy is capable of doing back then. Through the years, Ren’py has change quite considerably now with updated codes, better performance and more features… features that I plan to have fun with by re-making the old Lucy’s Revenge (released in December 25, 2006).

Enter the long overdue’d Lucy’s RE-Venge… it’s basically the same game with a few more megabytes added… it’s too early to spoil things so I’ll stop here for now and focus on the updated sprites…

It was all Samu-Kun’s fault for infecting me with MOE-MOE virus… now I too am slowly inclining towards MOE-MOE and it is very evident from the sprites I’m currently working on… oh, for inspiration… I decided to combine the best traits of the following characters and fuse it with Lucy with deadly results…

OK… I talked too much… I’ll go now…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Love in Space: Homeward – Working on the Logo More

2010-08-09T02:52:53+00:00

Remember the old logos I made for Homeward? Now, I have even more designs!

For memory’s sakes, this was what the rough draft looked like.

Followed by version one.

After which a cleaned up and more simple second version was created.

And then, I created what was supposed to be the final logo design.

After that, Sixten showed me his take on what the logo should look like. He even hand crafted the text font!

Obviously, all the work he put into making the font paid off, because it looked really unique, with the line in the H in Homeward intersecting artistically with the “e” and the “r.” And so, I made some modifications to his logo to create this:

I think we just about have a finalized logo design!

Filed under: Homeward

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: What exactly are we making here?

Katawa Shoujo — 2010-08-08T23:23:12+00:00

I don't remember who brought it up first yesterday, but we were discussing the tricky problem of immersion in the dev channel yesterday which led into a bigger discussion about what exactly we'd classify a visual novel as. This came from one of our favorite topics of conversation, which is what in the world is wrong with visual novels--or rather, why they can't seem to become a pop culture sensation (spoilers: they will probably never be a pop culture sensation).

The problem is that Visual Novels seem to be caught between being games and being novels. Looking at some of the debates surrounding other developments on the VN scene (specifically some of the commentary about that novelstream thing that I refuse to have an opinion on) you can see would-be developers listing things they want their VNs to do while remaining blissfully ignorant that what they're describing isn't a VN at all and is more like an RPG. Part of the problem comes, I think, from not having a definition of a VN, so let's lay that one on the table right now:

Presenting The Hivemind's Definition of Visual Novel: A standalone form of electronic literature (that is, not requiring the internet), characterized by a combination of text and sprites, photographs, or animation to tell stories (i.e. a visual element combined with text to tell a story).

This is a pretty wide definition, and leaves a lot of how the story is told up for interpretation. The problem with narrowing it down would be to sacrifice room for innovation. It also would introduce a bias--I had to say 'not requiring' the internet because while there are web-based VNs out there, they aren't the only VNs. You might also notice I said nothing about any sort of reader control over the narrative, because that is also not a part of what is necessary. The only two core components of the medium are right there in the name: the visual aspect has to be there, and the textual aspect has to be there. Adding game elements makes it something else, not a visual novel, but maybe a different form of electronic literature.

While I'm defining things I guess I should define electronic literature--I'm gonna actually cheat and just use some other academic's definition (although they call it 'digital fiction' the definition works for electronic literature so I'm using it here): 'fiction written for and read on a computer screen that pursues its verbal, discursive and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium, and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium.' Visual Novels would lose the movement of sprites, or the addition of music--some VNs wouldn't lose anything at all if they were presented as a book with pictures, but the fact that some would is enough.

Right. That's got our definitions sorted out, so let's go a little deeper. Let's examine what happens when we read something like Katawa Shoujo.

What are we presented with? Well, KS is a story told in first person. Not only that, but the reader is able to choose how they want Hisao to respond to particular situations, which in turn will result in different stories being told--just like a CYOA novel (remember the Apollo 13 CYOA? Anyone?). Does this make KS a 'game?' Again, it comes down to definitions. Games generally have conditions for something they define as 'victory.' The player achieves victory by acting within the rules that the game has set out. KS has no such victory condition--some endings are 'happy' endings and some are 'sad,' but we do not define any one such ending as the 'right' ending. Hisao either winds up with a girl or he doesn't. The 'sad' endings in KS are no more than the bad endings in a CYOA. You go back and make a different choice and see where that gets you. However, the first-person narration coupled with the ability to choose some of Hisao's responses makes a reader of Katawa Shoujo feel more like they are Hisao (an effect that climatic refers to as the 'IT'S LIKE I'M REALLY _______' effect). This does not make KS a dating simulation, however, because you don't actually have to work within any set of rules to get the girls to like you beyond choosing the branches of the story that we as developers have decided will lead to a happy ending rather than a sad ending.

So VNs are not games--and those that market themselves as such are either not actually visual novels or are misrepresenting themselves. Furthermore, VNs (and I feel like this is stating the painfully obvious) do not have to be romantic at all. It is a more story-heavy bit of electronic literature rather than game-heavy. Game-heavy examples of electronic literature would be something like Mass Effect, which also tells a branching narrative (this is a bit of an oversimplification but to really get into things would make this even longer than it already is) while also having skill-based challenges for the player to overcome (as well as all the character building and equipment selection that has no effect on the story but does make the skill-based challenges easier or harder). Personally I'd love to see more VNs told in the third person, or VNs that tell stories that aren't in some way romantic. The thing that is holding back VNs (apart from the stubborn insistence that they are games, which they are not) is a lack of experimentation with the stories. We're still finding our feet--and I lump KS in with a rather ignoble list of derivative VNs that rely too heavily on romance and anime cliches (we have tried very hard to avoid this, but the setting itself is so heavily played out that the chances of it being original were crippled from the get-go).

I'm not saying such VNs don't already exist--I can think of a few off the top of my head, and I'm sure that you all can come up with a hell of a lot more than I can--but certainly they don't appear to be the norm. Until then, VNs are doomed to be little more than occasional curiosities, eclipsed by stories that take more advantage of their formats. The strength of a VN is that it can tell a complex narrative as well as blend it with impressive art. Unfortunately, the format has so much baggage attached to it that it can really only thrive by making a clean break with its roots and spinning itself as something else. 'Electronic novel' has a ring to it, don't you think?

--The Hivemind

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