Planet EVN - English Visual Novels

Winter Wolves: Vendors, quests and random encounters

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:22:48 +0000

Even my cat Gilda is waiting impatiently Loren RPG release!

It has been a long week. I spent it testing, adding lots of small details, and so on. This process is was is commonly known as “polishing”. I am trying really to make the game the best I can, but of course I also want to release it soon!

As the post title says, the three main things missing were vendors, quests and random encounters. So far I have implemented only the quests (more below) but the vendor is at good point too, while for the random encounters very likely will need to implement the map first.

In the image above, I added a tooltip with a detailed explanation of all the 3 base attributes, to help the player decide better how to spend the attribute points. The basics are quite clear though: Warrior need Strength, Thieves need Skills and Mages need Will

Another thing I recently added are the quest. The code was already done, but I added a simple but efficient screen to inform the players when they got a new quest, like in the image above.

Quests are useful especially in the beginning to “boost” the experience of players, since the battles without many skills lose a lot of their charm. So I wanted the player to level up quickly at least in the beginning, so they can learn new skills. The level-up speed is something I need to tweak and will take some time as well.

I did also many minor changes to the party information screen. I enlarged the number of party portraits displayed at once, so you have to use less the up/down arrow to scroll between the various party members. I am also planning a short tutorial for each screen, including this one. The battle tutorial is already implemented instead, but will need some feedback (I think might be too long).

What about the other games?

Fear not! Heileen 3 is going forward very well, the total plot is already 81,000 words and there are still Marie and Lora’s romance arc missing, so will definitely be a long game.

I also should get new art and texts for the various other projects (including some that I’m keeping secret), but as you know until Loren’s Beta is finished, I’ll be working almost exclusively on that!

One thing I can announce though, and is that I had the chance to hire again Loren’s artist by pure luck for a limited amount of time, and I had him work on Amber’s Magic Shop art. So finally I’ll be able to get the art for that game!

Nyucu+: One more project down!

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:12:43 +0000

…so far! I usually get to do extra art later on whenever I’m done with the original art requirements for a project ^^;
But I just finished working on the last scheduled CG for Hope~
It was very fun to work on it! The characters were fun to draw, the chibi CGs were *super* fun and the full CGs came out quite pretty!
I hope it sees the light of day in the near future ^__^

I’m now working pretty much fulltime on TPF. I say pretty much because my schedule is a mess and I still have some other stuff to finish ^^; Especially stuff from a game I’m working on with some people over here that actually has a deadline and it’s quite soon X_x (I get paid really well, though (: )

On this second batch of TPF work (last being over a year ago!) I’ve been working on extra characters, an extra BG, promo art and GUI stuff. I’m pretty confident I’ll finish all the higher priority stuff by next week (: And then a couple of weeks more for lower priority stuff.
Then… it’s Flight of Twilight time! Lots of things to fix here and there and to draw and to color before the release of chapter 1!

And that’s pretty much my project schedule for the next month! (:

Love on Love: Analogue: A Hate Story

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:39:00 +0000

Analogue: A Hate Story:

So, it’s finally finished after a very long half-year of work; in collaboration with Raide and with an original soundtrack by Isaac Schankler.

Uncover the mystery of what happened to the final generation aboard the generation ship Mugunghwa by reading through its dead crew’s logs, with the help of a spunky AI sidekick!

Two pursuable characters. Five endings. A dark visual novel that further extends the non-linear style of Digital: A Love Story in a mystery featuring transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay.

You can buy it, or download the free trial, here.

Pegasi's Dev Blog: Firefly for Android - out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:00:53 +0000

Since Firefly second edition has been released for the PC, it's now Android's turn! This version will be half the price too, since it doesn't include a high resolution mode.

As you can see, the application can be used in both landscape and portrait orientation, with the graphics scaling along accordingly. The visual novel should work on any Android 2.1+ device.

Please click on the picture below to get it now:

We hope you'll enjoy it and we'll do our best to bring more visual novels to Android in the future.

~~Last Firefly post ever!~~

~Anna

Dischan Devblog: 7 Things I Learned About Project Management

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:48:53 +0000

I know it’s been a while since any posts with real content. Sorry about that. I can’t say much right now, but we have been working hard on something special that should be coming in the next couple months. Hopefully there will be a blog post about it in February.

Anyway, since there isn’t much to talk about, I thought I might write up an article about some things I’ve learned as project manager for Dischan. With any luck parts of it might benefit some people out there who are thinking of starting up their own team projects. So, without further ado, here is seven things I learned about project management.

1. Be Humble

Being humble is easily one of the most important qualities of a good project manager. The fact is, you will be dealing with a lot of different sorts of people, many of whom will be much more skilled in some areas than you are. Don’t be too proud to listen to them, don’t pretend to know things when you don’t, and perhaps most importantly, be prepared for the possibility that what you think you know is wrong. People have a lot of respect for a person who can admit when they are wrong or when they don’t know something. It’s also a good rule in general, as people don’t like to be lead by someone who is arrogant. Having a poor personality will increase the number of arguments between you and your team.

2. Chose your team wisely

When you are first starting out, you are always thrilled when someone volunteers their time for your project. There’s nothing wrong with that, it really is something to be excited about and appreciate. However, you should be selective whenever possible with whom you work with. If you can’t work well with a person, then arguments and personality clashes will weigh the whole team down. Working in teams is complicated, and productivity has a lot to do with moral. Seeing people argue, especially when one of them is supposed to be the project lead, really hurts productivity for everyone. Stay away from people with poor personalities, even if they are skilled in their field. It is often not worth it. Also stay away from people who work rarely. It may seem like people just hanging around can’t possibly be hurting anything, but they are. Their inactivity can be very demotivating for the team. Likewise, those who work hard and are productive are very motivating to have around. When you find people like this, grab and hold onto them for all their worth, which is a lot.

3. Be impartial

There will be trouble. Be prepared for it. People will argue, problems will come up, project direction will be questioned, and you will have to be the mediator for these issues. Don’t let your opinions get in the way of seeing things clearly. Be impartial, and try to look at things from the perspective of a third person. People will appreciate it when you are able to see beyond yourself and recognize their views.

Another thing to note is that while you may be project leader, that should not make you a tyrant. Avoid forcing your decisions on the team when you can. If you find you absolutely have to, it had better be after a lot of discussion. Your team is your most valuable resource, and they are not stupid. This goes back to being humble. Often times a member of your team may know more than you, or may be seeing things more clearly than you are. Listen to and involve your team in decisions. Not only will this make your team feel more involved in the project, but chances are much better decisions will be made as well.

4. Learn to manage your time

You will be busy. You’re going to have to get used to that. Luckily, the workload is something that will pile on slowly. As the leader of a project, you tend to acquire miscellaneous tasks as time passes that really start to add up after a while, especially if you have outside commitments, like school or a job.

You should keep a notebook, and preferably a schedule. You may say “I’ve tried schedules, but I never end up following them!”, don’t worry about that. It may be true, but the point is not really that you MUST follow every single activity you plan. The point is to get thinking about what you do with your time, what you could be doing with your time, and what you should be doing with your time. Once you complete a schedule, you should check and update it often. Even if you don’t entirely follow it, you might eventually find yourself organizing in clever ways that you can stick to. For instance, I do my university work in the morning, while the rest of Dischan is usually asleep, so I have no distractions. I also organize my tasks from most mentally taxing, to the least, and do them throughout the day. This makes sure I’m well rested for difficult tasks, and I can still do the simpler ones by nighttime.

I also keep a really big whiteboard full of stuff I have to do/remember. I really like it, but I think in this case your mileage may vary. There is also the possibility that you don’t want a giant whiteboard hanging up in your room. You weirdo.

5. Learn to live as a generalist

If you want to be the best at something, then you probably shouldn’t be a project leader. Managing projects is about having a little bit of knowledge in everything. Specialists, like great artists, great musicians, and great writers, make for excellent team members and are incredibly valuable in that role, but they tend to be not so good as managers (it’s always possible that they can be, but it’s pretty rare). Managers have to have knowledge in multiple areas so they can help their team, understand the duties and work of each member, as well as have the ability to assess task difficulty, completion times, etc.

What does this mean? Basically it means that if you want to be a good manager, you’ll have to learn a lot about a lot of things. This is why you will probably never be able to become a specialist, you just won’t have the time required to invest in just one subject. Unfortunately, it’s just a sacrifice you have to make (feel free to still try though, I do every now and then).

It is worth noting of course, that if you are a managing a small team of specialists in one area, for instance as an art director managing a team of artists, then your knowledge doesn’t have to be quite so broad.

6. Be available

Things can change overnight, or even within a few hours. There should be a way for your team to contact you, and you should always have that method available. Cell phones work well. Texts are generally cheap internationally, and some websites will let you send them for free (try searching for ‘yourcarrier send a text message’).

This becomes more and more important as your project grows. For instance, what if a surge of customers suddenly start buying your product after it was posted on a popular site. It could cause your server to crash, and it would be pretty terrible if you couldn’t be contacted to reboot it. That’s a lot of potentially lost revenue as users become frustrated and perhaps just decide to pirate your product instead. It also hurts your reputation for reliability.

7. Build trust

You should be able to trust your team, and your team should be able to trust you. This tends to happen naturally over time, but there are ways to help it along. The quickest way to build trust with your team is to actually trust them first. Giving team members important responsibilities lets them know that you trust and value them, and they will likely return these feelings.

Sometimes it is hard to trust and give up responsibility to your team members. What if they abuse their power? What if they don’t keep up with the tasks you’ve given them? You need to remember that without your team, your project would be nothing, and there would be nothing for you to worry about in the first place.

Obviously I am not suggesting you hand out trust and responsibilities willy-nilly, you should have reasonable reason to give your trust before you do, but don’t be too stingy with it either. There comes a time when you must delegate your important and high-responsibility tasks, usually when they have become too large to handle alone, and it pays to have members of your team that you can trust.

Conclusion

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. I might write up some more of these later. I hope that it helped at least someone out there. If you have anything you’d like for me to talk about concerning project management, or anything really, in the next article, feel free to leave it in the comments below.

I Whine About Games: you stand at a crossroads

noreply@blogger.com (Whiner) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:54:20 +0000

Okay, so. As you may know, Long Live The Queen is nearing completion. I don't expect it on sale until next month and there are many things still to be done, but the bulk of my work on it is going to be finished soon.

That means figuring out what I do next.

Obviously, there's a lot I'd like to be doing with Magical Diary, but I can't do anything with it at the moment until the artist is available again. Similarly, I posted a long time ago about a visual novel I was starting, but the artist has more or less dropped out on me. I am currently disinclined to start the whole thing over from scratch.

(Secretly, one reason I work with some off-the-shelf assets? Because I can guarantee that they'll actually be DONE.)

So, what will I be doing? I have ideas, of course, I always have far too many ideas. The problem is figuring out which ones are practical. At the moment the top concepts bouncing around in my brain are a VN about a reality TV show gone horribly wrong, or a rock-and-roll themed RPG. Do you know, I can't find any rock-and-roll CRPGs anywhere? There are music games, obviously, and some tabletop RPG systems (usually along the lines of "IN THE DISTANT FUTURE, FIGHT THE POWER OF CONFORMITY WITH ROCK", although I found one that was a tiny indie game about running your own depressing goth band and trying to get the most attention for your angst before everyone gives up in despair), but no rock CPRGs. Probably the closest is The World Ends With You, which has the right kind of attitude, but the characters aren't actually playing music.

Downside is that while Spiky and I both love Science Girls with geeky delight, it was not a sales success. There are many reasons for that, some of which we know how to fix, but it's possible that we just don't have enough of an RPG audience.

Will probably be prototyping some RPG gameplay to see if the ideas are fun before making any decisions.

Sakura River: IGW Free DLC in Production and Next Game in Planning

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:17:17 +0000

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that the free DLC for Infinite Game Works is in production now. Also the next project(s) is in the planning stages. They would be IGW Episode 1 and Don't Save the World: An RPG.

More info at a later date! We're still alive though.

I Whine About Games: The app market is still full of thieves

noreply@blogger.com (Whiner) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:12:39 +0000

Apparently someone tried to grab a flash dating sim off deviantart which wasn't even complete yet and put it for sale under their name on Android. Yikes! However, the actual author found it and got it taken down reasonably swiftly.

(I just stumbled across this by vague websearch, I know none of the people involved.)

Winter Wolves: Grinding or not grinding, that’s the question!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:29:24 +0000

In the photo above, Gilda and Leon sleeping “head to head”

I was hoping to announce the start of the beta pre-order for my fantasy RPG “Loren The Amazon Princess” but alas, I am going to delay it by a few weeks. I’m hoping by mid of February to have the full chapter 1 finished.

Below some screens of the vendor (WIP) and the battle with a 99% final layout:

See the full gallery on Posterous

What’s left ?

You might ask what exactly is missing? The biggest part of the game is done, but there are a lots of small things missing. To be clear I could release the beta at the end of this month, but it would miss a several interesting features like:

working vendor – the vendor code is still half-done, and even if the coder probably could finish it in 3 days, it would be greatly untested. Also I would need to define the vendors inventory, check what kind of items they might have available, and so on!
side quests – I’m thinking what to have as side quests. In the game, there are already side-quests but they appear later in the game, in particular in the expansion when you can choose if to recruit Sauzer, Mesphit and Chambara. I want to add a few more, nothing complex since the game is already VERY long, but still…
map system – it will be a simple map system like Planet Stronghold (nothing complex) but still I am missing the art and good part of implementation (like random encounters, and so on)
battle effects – there are SOME battle effects done (nothing fancy!) but when you have 80+ skills to do, it starts to be a LOONG task. I don’t want to spend much time on this, because it doesn’t make sense to make lots of efforts for a 1-2 second animation, but still I don’t want it to look like a total crap

So as you can see, nothing really ESSENTIAL to the game, but I don’t want to rush out the beta, and have people test an already outdated version, since I will add most of the things above.

What about the grinding?

The term grinding, as defined by Wikipedia:

“Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content.“

As you might know, I make heavy story-based games. However, Loren is the first game that has a very solid RPG gameplay. It’s much deeper, detailed and also complex than Planet Stronghold. And you can reach up to level 30 (I decided to lower the level cap from level 60 !).

I know that some people hate grinding, while other consider it an essential part of RPGs. Of course, not an excessive grinding, but if the battle is well done, it’s cool to kill monsters to gain more experience and unlock new skills.

In my case though, it also helps the game. As much as I can test it, and even if I offer different difficulty levels, I cannot know every single player skills. So even if I give out more experience points at Easy difficulty level, I cannot know if it will be enough for everyone to win the battle with Jul in chapter 4 of the game (it will be a hard battle!).

A solution is to leave some zones of the map with “wandering monsters”, so that if the player is stuck in a battle and cannot seem to win it, he can visit those places and fight some grinding battles to gain more experience and level up. As consequence, he can retry the previous battle but with a strongest party, increasing the chances of winning.

I think done this way, grinding is not a bad thing anymore, but is a sort of “approved cheat mode”. You can win most battles at your selected difficulty level? Good. You can’t? Try playing in a easier mode. You still cannot win that specific battle? Try grinding a bit, and then come back with a strongest party and kick the enemy’s ass!

The other games

I know recently I’m completely absorbed into Loren and haven’t updated much the other games progresses. This is because Loren is a very long and complex game to make, and I want to finish it soon. However don’t worry, since after it’s finished I’ll release some new dating/life sim, including Heileen 3 (probably this summer).

Here’s a picture of Marie with the “new look”. I find her very cute:

And she is a romance option

MoaCube » News: New preview build is live!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:02:04 +0000

The new preview build of Cinders is finally ready and available to all pre-order purchasers.

If you bought the game, please check your email for a new download link from BMT Micro. If you are a member of the press willing to do a preview, please contact us and we’ll fix you a copy, too.

The new version includes a lot more story content, along with numerous fixes and improvements. Writing took much longer than we expected, so to make use of that extra time, we got around to implementing some cool new stuff from your suggestions and our own wish list.

Notable changes:

Branch icon appears when current events are an outcome of earlier choices.
Every character now has several more poses for specific situations.
Small face icons were added next to character names for better readability.
Rewards visible in the main menu for completing various events.
Auto-play option is available.
Fast-text option for the quick readers out there.
Many new sound and visual effects were added.
From now on, save files will be compatible between game versions.
Several bug fixes and other minor improvements.

We hope you’ll enjoy the new build. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments or on our forums.

As for the general development progress — we’re getting there, but there’s still a significant amount of writing left to be done. We have hired an additional writer to speed up the process. If everything goes well, we should be able to set some release date soon.

Bliss Stage Visual Novel: Backer Alpha download links

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:08:13 +0000

Update #16: Backer Alpha download links

If you’re a backer of this project, please go to Kickstarter to read this post.

Article source: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041711353/bliss-stage-visual-novel/posts/166429

Bliss Stage Visual Novel: Status Report and Backer Alpha

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:07:15 +0000

Okay, we’ve had some delays but we are getting back on track. The basic rules of Bliss Stage are implemented and the first mission sequence is scripted. The combat animation system is still in a very early stage and the advanced rules are still being implemented but the game is in a playable state. Once we’ve had time for bug testing and running it by our backers we’ll be producing a public demo version.

We’re also currently interviewing voice actors and getting ready to begin recording dialog.

Article source: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041711353/bliss-stage-visual-novel/posts/166420

Project Memoria: Character Theme Music, Part 2

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:53:53 +0000

Long time, no update! Finished working on the music themes for the five heroines.

Memoria Test 11 (Julia’s Theme) – The cymbals near the end were a new thing for me to try out.
Memoria Test 12 (Mikaela’s Theme) – Decided to go “off key” for a bit at 1:03-1:04, listen to the vibes carefully.
Memoria Test 13 (Anna’s Theme) – Because I was sort of “lazy” at the time, I took parts from Test 7 and added them to Anna’s theme; of course had to make it fit the key signature.
Memoria Test 14 (Tristina’s Theme) – To be honest, creating rock music is not my thing. But this turned out pretty well, I think.
Memoria Test 15 (Aurelia’s Theme) – Had to abuse the automation to get her theme to work out. Personally, my favorite heroine theme.

Hope you guys enjoy!

Updates on the story – Currently revising Aurelia’s route, and I’m hoping to get her done by the end of this month. Then it’s revising Julia’s route, which will prove to be a challenge.

Just in case some of you didn’t notice, you can follow me and my sister on twitter if you wish; there’s a follow button on the side menu of the blog.

-Ryne (project manager/writer/composer)

sakevisual: Happy Lunar New Year! The Dragon is Coming.

noreply@blogger.com (Ayu) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:31:06 +0000

It's the Lunar New Year, and that means time for tasty food, fireworks, and hope for a great harvest. I'm making rice cakes for dinner tonight. ^o^ As it's the year of the dragon, I thought it would be cool to post a sketch of a relevant character from Jisei, but then I realized that that would be a massive spoiler. D: However! I did get this lovely dragon logo from Alisa, and it was just too

Visual Novel Reviews 4: don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:59:37 +0000

Romance, drama, and technology are three themes that fans of Christine Love‘s other works (such as Cell Phone Love Letter and Digital: A Love Story) should be familiar with. don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story is a visual novel that includes all three in spades. You play as John Rook, a two-time divorcé and high school teacher that secretly monitors his class’ social network on his Amie XTablet computer for potential cyberbullying. Through both reading their private messages and talking to his students face-to-face, Mr. Rook becomes seriously involved with seven of his special snowflakes’ lives.

The game plays out in two different ways. It’s like your typical visual novel with a bunch of choices, three endings, seven chapters, character development, and lots of dialogue. What makes the game shine is in its second feature – the Amie XTablet. That’s where you find the high level of customization that you’d expect from a Christine Love game. The tablet is your voyeuristic passport into the personal lives of your students. Their social network is like a better, more interesting FB with status updates you can actually care about, rather than bash your head open over.

Every time one of the kids posted something new (indicated by a noise), I rushed to read it. It didn’t matter to me that they weren’t paying attention in their lessons. Who cares about that when you can read about the latest classroom gossip? It’s funny how different they seem online versus reality, when you first meet them. There’s a quiet and proper girl standing in front of you in her uniform, and there, online, is that same girl with a suggestive profile picture. It made me laugh, because the same thing happens in real life – people have all kinds of pictures that their teachers shouldn’t be seeing, but probably can by doing a simple search.

The social network aspect made this game worth it to play, especially since we’re all stalkers. “Friending” and following and checking up on people – those are today’s most acceptable forms of stalking, because people post every minute detail of their lives, hoping that someone, somewhere out there will read it, even if they’ve only got their moms as followers/friends/etc. Some of us admit our creep status more readily, but social networking has provided us a whole window into people’s private lives. People air all sorts of dirty laundry online.

The characters in this game do exactly that. When they have problems, they write about it. As soon as they’re done confronting someone, they post about the aftermath. Nothing offline is kept one hundred percent separate from the online world. Even when John talks to his students, they’re texting away on their tablets, carrying on with the latest news.

The game is set in the year 2027, which is important to the plot. The chatspeak that the characters use might get annoying, but as someone who hears people quoting memes on a near daily basis, I think it’s feasible that kids in 2027 would have adopted “lol” into their regular speech. Strong language (including a certain homophobic slur) that we’d find offensive in 2012 has also become as common and innocuous as saying the word, “cat.” I found it more surprising that the kids weren’t using chatspeak in their actual posts.

It’s also set in a more liberal era, where homosexuality is more readily accepted. You witness the struggles and innocence of a new gay relationship, and can choose whether or not to help a broken up lesbian couple get back together. You can also choose to accept the advances of one of your underage students, if you’re feeling up to that. It was great to read a story where the relationships were treated naturally and realistically. There’s an opportunity to look at one of your students’ nudey pictures, too, by Googling a password. If any of those things bother you, then this might not be your game (’cause it definitely ain’t your story). The pedo storyline did gross me out, though, mainly because of their first kiss graphic.

Speaking of the CGs, some of them were pretty awkward looking. For the most part, the art is passable. The writing and coding completely trumps it. The side images are redundant, but I loved finding out more about the characters, and realizing how much more insightful they were than what I expected them to be on the surface. They’re more mature than they look, but at the same time, they’re just kids. And, this game, ultimately, is about their stories and lives, not yours. These are characters that will stick with me for a long while.

Read it. Play it. Whatever. You won’t regret it. The ending was a little preachy, but it did make me think about what the kids of the future will be like when I’m around John Rook’s age in 2027. I think I’ll look back on this game, and see how much of it rang true.

Become the bro-est of bros, and download the game here.

Winter Wolves: Old school vs modern RPGs

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:45:46 +0000

In the image above, my cat Orfeo (italian for Orpheus) on the bed.

Today I want to talk about some differences between “old school” and “modern” RPGs, since I’m working right now on Loren Amazon Princess that is what I would define a “old school” RPG for some aspect, while “modern” for others.

Below a gallery with some preview images, showing several aspects of the game:

See the full gallery on Posterous

One of the main differences between oldschool and modern RPGs is the turn-based / real-time mechanics. Most modern RPG use real-time. Unfortunately, I was kind of forced to use turn-based because making a real-time game needs lots more animation/art, and in general is harder to make.

I still have a battle movement order though, which is dynamic. If you see the column on the right, shows the movement order, and as you hover the mouse on the possible actions, it gives you a “preview” of how your decision will change the order. So beside the power/effects of a skill, you’ll also have to ponder the delay that the same skill gives. Sometimes for example, is better to use a skill that does less damage but lets you kill two goblin thieves already injured, than “waste” a skill that does more damage but pushes you back on the movement order list.

Another difference is auto-mapping. In my game I don’t have dungeons with map, so there will be just a main map of the world, with easily accessible places. But I remember some oldschool RPGs that didn’t have an automap, and you had to write down on paper the map of the dungeon. Seems crazy thinking about this now !

The user interface is also something that was greatly improved over old RPGs. Last year I bought Temple Of Elemental Evil, and was shocked by the clumsy interface: no mouse over, so simple button to change view/move object between players, and so on. Most modern RPGs use a “shared inventory”, that means all player have immediate access to all item owned by the party. If someone has an item equipped you usually need to unequip it to put in the pool, but before every item (even unequipped ones) was carried by a specific player, so the user had to do a much bigger amount of clicking.

The vendor / items comparison wasn’t automatic like now. In most new games, you have a way to immediately see if an item you just looted is more or less powerful than the one you’re carrying. Before instead you had to look at all the statistics and decide for yourself! It was crazy, right?

Also, with a RPG featuring only one character is quite easy, but if you have a party things starts to get complex: what if there are two warriors in the party? you need to tell the player if the new longsword you just found is better or worse than the weapons equipped by both warriors. This is the problem we’re facing right now with the loot and the vendor in Loren Amazon Princess game!

The difficulty level is also something that changed radically over time. Most old RPGs were very hard, while modern ones offers at least several different difficulty levels, so people that just want to have easy combat and progress in the story, will be able too. In Loren there are three different difficulty levels, and they have a big impact on gameplay rules. At easy level, enemies are easy and the elemental resistances have a marginal impact on battle. At hard level, enemies are tougher and the elemental resistances have a key role: hitting an enemy vulnerable to fire with a fire-based skill will have a much bigger impact.

Lastly, the level progression was completely different. Even if I have to say that JRPG were always different from western RPGs, but in general leveling up after the first early levels was a big achievement. In AD&D games, already getting from level 5 to level 6 could take a LOONG time! Recently, beside the already mentioned JRPG, even in modern MMORPG like Everquest or WoW, you’re going to see the levelup screen much more often.

In Loren, I have decided to use this system: each character has a main class (Warrior, Thief or Mage) and a specialization (unique) class. Each class has 5 different skills, and each one has 3 levels of power. So as you see, each character has 30 different skills that can learn. So I have decided (though this might change during testing of course!) to have a level cap of 60, and give a skill point every 2 levels. This way, at level 20 you could have learned all the skills for every character, but at the basic level of power: so will add some more strategy since the player will need to think which skill to raise up to the maximum power level?

Every level up instead you get 3 attribute points, to spend on Strength, Skill or Will attributes. Will write about those three attributes next friday since the explanation is long and beside… by that time I might be about to announce the open beta preorders! (crossing fingers)

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Katawa Shoujo Soundtrack Up for Download

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:49:36 +0000

The Katawa Shoujo original soundtrack is now available for download. It can be accessed on the official site in the Downloads section, or from this link:

DDL: Katawa Shoujo Enigmatic Box of Sound

All music pieces used in Katawa Shoujo are inside, including the animated cutscene music. Well done to all the musicians who contributed music to Katawa Shoujo, especially our main musician, NicolArmarfi.

- Suriko

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Ren'Py Announcements: Ren'Py 6.13.8 Released

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:57:24 +0000

I've released Ren'Py 6.13.8. This release focuses on improving compatibility - especially with bad graphics cards - and bug fixing. It fixes both minor bugs, and contains low-risk improvements to the design of features. (For example, it includes significantly more useful new-style side image support, and a callback that is run after each python block.) A 6.13.9 will be following shortly, improving Android support.

Testers report that this release works with hardware that failed in 6.13.7, so I recommend everyone consider upgrading.

Downloads of 6.13 can be found at:

http://www.renpy.org/release/6.13

A full list of changes to Ren'Py can be found at:

http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/changelog.html

A list of changes that may require you to update your game can be found at:

http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/incompatible.html

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: 2 000 000 blog hits!

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:53:26 +0000

That's a whole lot of people. Thank you for reading

Visual Novel Reviews 4: Yume Nikki

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:59:23 +0000

Madotsuki had a dream, too. In fact, she had several dreams, each one freakier than the last. Some nights, she’s haunted by a myriad of eyeballs, backed up with a windy, electronic undercurrent. Other nights, she imagines herself in a room of candles, the sound of footsteps approaching echoing throughout her head.

When she wakes up, she returns to a reclusive reality, where the only door she ever exits is the one leading to her balcony. Try as she might, she’ll never leave her one room apartment. No. The world out there is a cold unknown, not the place for a shut-in like Madotsuki. All she has are her dreams, and her ancient TV & Famicom system, two symbols of how removed she is from every advancement outside.

In her dreams, she can walk into a dark place full of doors leading to all kinds of dream worlds. She first picked the door that was calling her name – the shiney, technicolor one. It was surreal, with bouncing neon creatures everywhere she turned. Unsure of herself, she walked down hallways, trying to avoid the monsters.

Some laughed when she knocked into them, and others grunted; all of them scared her. She ran, but no matter how fast she moved, there were more of them, in every direction she turned. Freaked out, Madotsuki woke herself up from her nightmare.

The next dream was just as weird. She chose a door that took her to a place that’s floor was a bird’s eye view of the entire dreamscape. Ominous music played as she walked along red serial numbers. It wasn’t like the dancing dream that she had had the night before. There weren’t dancing, wonderful creatures. Only two-legged red faced things.

The game/experience doesn’t hand you a plot. You’ve gotta do your own thinking. Everything you imagine about the experience comes from your own head, as much as it comes from hers. You don’t have any directions on where to go. All you know is that you have to travel throughout these dream worlds and capture “effects” ranging from cat ears to kitchen knives. When you place all of the effects in the room of doors, the game ends. That’s it.

It’s fun to guess what every symbol in her dreams mean. Something happened to this girl to make her into such a recluse. What that is, is up to you to decide, based on the figures in her dreams. There are plenty of theories floating around out there.

It’s not a game for everyone. If you’re the type of person that needs a clear objective, then Yume Nikki is not for you. In fact, if you are that type of person (nothing wrong with that), you should find yourself a walkthrough. The majority of the game is spent wandering from dream to dream, in search of 24 objects with nothing to point you where you should go. Like I said before, this is an EXPERIENCE, and a beautifully creepy one at that.

It’s like the sick twisted love child of Silent Hill (in atmosphere) and Earthbound (in looks). There’s a lot to discover within the game’s open-ended worlds. It’s not a scary game in the sense that a bunch of things pop out at you. The scares aren’t cheap. What makes Yume Nikki so scary is that it crawls under your skin. It does psychological horror right; your imagination makes it terrifying.

Yume Nikki isn’t a visual novel, but it’s an experience that I feel that most visual novel fans will enjoy, and one that I feel like visual novel developers can take a lot away from. When you create stories, you don’t have to spell everything out to your readers. Imagination goes a long way.

Kikiyama created Yume Nikki in 2005, using the RPG Maker 2003 program. You can download the English version here. Special thanks to Crimson for suggesting that I review this.

Visual Novels Now!: So....what's going on dude?

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:05:00 +0000

Hello all! It's been a while since I've updated things here, but hopefully everyone reading this is enjoying their year so far. I also want to again thank everyone who participated and watched the 2011 Best Of Awards 'broadcast' I did on the VNs Now Twitter page. It was a nervous night but it came out as well as I could have hoped for and I think everyone got the recognition they deserved. So again, thank you everybody!

Now, for the present. As I write this, I'm currently sick in bed. I've been doing great all Winter long and in the last two days something finally got through and knocked me on my ass pretty good. It should hopefully be out of my system soon, but I say that to say that I've used my hacking up my lungs as a convinient excuse to play visual novels - specifically Katawa Shoujo. I have enjoyed taking my time and going through the different aspects of the game and hopefully by the end of the week not only will I have a review of KS up but also a few features on the blog post from 4LS in the aftermath of the release. There is a lot to take away from Katawa Shoujo, I think anyway, and I hope you will as well.

NOW, the thing that sucks about me being sick is that I seem to have a track record of making other things sick around me. My laptop screen is having white-out episodes lately and apparently there is some sort of cord that will take TWO WEEKS to replace. If it wasn't warrantied I'd break this thing BUT I am currently hoping it holds up a bit longer before I ship it off. So, unfortunately, until it it is fixed the sort of lethargic pace you've seen here so far this year will continue for the short term. I am pushing every properly functioning moment I get with my laptop to get the interviews, reviews and features for the month done and hopefully the bulk of it will be up this week. So there WILL be updates this month...it's just taking some time. I hope everyone understands and I ask for your patience during the next few weeks.

Annnnd I think that is it! Er, anyone watches American football? If you don't you are missing some amazing moments in sports...one that I will leave you with from this previous weekend! Keep an eye out for this month's interviews as well: I think you're really going to enjoy them. I'll see you all very soon!

American Jurassic's Blog: Hiatus? What hiatus?

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:14:06 +0000

With the release of Katawa Shoujo confirming some assumptions about the western world’s readiness for bishoujo visual novels, Pier 7 Media is back at work on American Jurassic.

Watch this space for more information.

Filed under: Progress reports

I Whine About Games: Magical Diary - A Victory for Evil?

noreply@blogger.com (Whiner) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:52:23 +0000

So, at the end of Magical Diary, players have the option to upload their character to the Online Yearbook to display to others.

This also means we have a record of play distribution. Obviously this won't cover ALL players, only those who choose to upload their characters, and therefore, the statistics may be off. But it's still interesting to look at. We have five romanceable characters, and four of those have two ending possibilities, Romance or Friendship. It's also possible to end up alone, either through not starting a path or through screwing one up midway through.

Of the ~900 current uploads:

14% ended alone.

5% were Virginia Romance.
2% were Virginia Friendship.

9% were Ellen Romance.
3% were Ellen Friendship.

16% were Grabiner Romance.
2% were Grabiner Friendship.

20% were Donald Romance.
3% were Donald Friendship.

and finally...

24% were Damien Romance.

While it's slightly tricky to be sure from the records, I expect quite a lot of the 'end alone' were people on Damien's path, too.

So there you have it, mathematical proof that people still prefer the bad boys. :) (To be fair, the game does sort of steer you in his direction for your first playthrough.)

(as for the missing 2%, blame rounding.)

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: The Season of Goodbyes

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:02:39 +0000

While this is the last part of the Memories series, and my last post about creating KS, it won't be the last post on the blog. We'll use it for future news and announcements, and maybe the other 4LS members still have something they want to write about. Either way, thanks for reading.

Here where I live, it's winter right now, darkness, snow and freezing temperatures. I have to stretch my imagination a bit to conjure the spring of Northern Japan into my mind. A chill wind prickles my skin through my shirt. Cherry blossoms, of course those god damn cherry blossoms have to be there too. It's spring, after all. A walkway lined with blossoming trees, people going somewhere. It's the graduation day at Yamaku High School. And I'm there.

The graduating students walk towards the school building for the last time. It looks just as perfect as Mike's illustration above. We go inside, the hall is packed full of people. Dozens of excited conversations, even in hushed whispers, create a veritable cacophony (so happy I could use that word). The tension is palpable. I can see all the faces that are so familiar to me. Hisao, Shizune, Misha and Hanako. Rin and Emi. Lilly and Kenji. The teachers. They're all there.

And maybe we're all there too. The 4LS members, standing somewhere in the back without anyone realizing it. Graduation is a good metaphor for what we've been going through for the past week.

Maybe Shizune would hold the valedictorian's speech, that sounds like something we would do. I've been to quite a few graduations, and I think speeches are the most important part. A good orator can grip the audience and really move them, while a poor one will make the long ceremonies feel like torture. I wonder if Shizune's speech would be good.

Everyone receives their diploma. One by one, they are called to the front. Would Hanako be comfortable with a couple of hundred of eyepairs on her? How would Rin receive her diploma? All kinds of little questions.

The ceremonies are over. People shuffle outside, and all that tension is released in a flood of emotion. Teary eyes, yet happy faces. Hugs and promises to keep in touch are exchanged. The schoolmates you barely knew are your best friends forever today. Some of them you will never see again, some you might by sheer coincidence, years and years later. Still, even in that distant future, this day will connect you to each other. You might feel an emptiness inside, where the part of your life that is now over used to be. That feeling is familiar to me.

Releasing Katawa Shoujo was our graduation day.

Every day of our lives, we stand at the edge of the future and the past. Events like this just make it much clearer. They are milestones too, markers of the sharp turns your life can take. You dress up for the occasion, tie flowers in your clothes, there will be an audience too. You leave something behind. You head for something new. The future is an open road. From here where we stand, you could go anywhere.

The journey of creating Katawa Shoujo was a long one, but now it's over. I'm happy we could make it together. Thank you everyone.

- Aura

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Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Opening Up

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:15:42 +0000

If you've followed the KS project at all, you're probably more familiar with me than any other 4LS member. Over the years, this blog has more often than not been a soapbox for me to talk about stuff that comes to my mind and I have made more posts on the public forum than some of 4LS members have forum posts in total. It doesn't mean by any means that I'm the voice of 4LS (Suriko, if anyone, would be that), most of my talking is just opinions and thoughts of my own. Since I enjoy doing this kind of thing more than most other members, it just often has ended up being me who does most of it. Thinking back about the stuff I have talked about, a few key points come to mind.

The early posts on the blog actually did contain stuff pertinent to KS development progress, but the blog soon started evolving into a chronicle of what it was like to make Katawa Shoujo. Many entries contain thoughts on a very general level, some not really pertinent to KS at all, some about all sorts of fringe stuff. All of it, however, is marked with some sort of openness about what we thought, and many of the entries got a mixed or even crushing reception. Still, we were a lot more comfortable with (and thought it more interesting) being open and honest about this stuff, even some of the ugly parts, than the mechanical details of development. I realize that this stance is one that a whole lot of people don't share (we did make quite a lot of people frustrated by our lack of progress updates), and also that it's one that we have the luxury to afford (more on that later). Either way, I hope that the people who've read the blog have found it a reasonably nice experience. I certainly had a good time writing it.

But why write a blog at all? I guess mostly because it was something I, and we, wanted to do. The days at the 4LS "office" weren't hardcore, ball-busting slave work all the time. We did fool around, chat about silly things, watch movies together, did KS stuff that wasn't development (blog, "fan" art, events like Secret Santas), that kind of thing. Though seemingly a waste of time, stuff like that helped us bond and engage ourselves more with the project. Having fun was important.

Speaking of engaging with the project, we weren't the only ones to do that. KS has been marked by a really active fan following, especially since Act 1 release. I mean, at the time of our release, Mishimmie had over 2000 pieces of fanart, our public forum had 8 times more posts than the dev forum and there were dozens of fanfics and other fan creations on our forums and elsewhere. That's a huge amount of fan material for a game that didn't actually exist. The truth is that KS wouldn't be nearly the same without all its fans. We've had some great times with not only between the guys of 4LS, but also the IRC regulars, people on our forum, translators, everyone. We've drawn a lot of strength from everyone who followed the project. However, we've also always had a bit of a problem with fans of KS: we don't know what to do with them (the other, other white meat?). A commercial team has a clear incentive to get as many fans as possible, and make them as happy as possible: revenue. We don't have anything like that, so our experience with internet fame and adoration has been a little awkward. I guess we sought to connect with the fans by being open on the blog and the forum, and anyone could always come on IRC to chat, but I don't know how the relationship worked out from the point of view of a fan. On the other hand, the lack of an incentive to please absolutely everyone has also the positive flipside of us being able to conduct ourselves as we pleased, and we never had qualms about being straightforward or even blunt to unreasonable people, or making unpopular decisions that might've cut into the hype and following around the game. So, I guess our thoughts could be summed up as us not caring whether we had fans, but trying our best to care about the ones we did have.

Fans of course make us massively happy, even if we can get kinda weirded out at times. Fans can also surprise us. Something that has really blown us off our feet has been the large amounts of incredibly emotional response to Katawa Shoujo that we've seen. I've seen people confessing having cried after playing KS, or otherwise feeling moved. I've read touching stories from people who feel that playing KS gave them an impact to change something in their lives, maybe something as simple as starting to jog, or something as deep as contacting a long-lost friend or loved one, or trying to resolve one's own issues. I can't possibly express what reading feedback like that feels like. I mean, if even one single person's life is actually changed for the better as a result of KS, we've done something objectively good. That's a possibility that never crossed our minds until a bit over a week ago. The suddenly realized implications continue, and get stranger. The chances of something like KS happening to any one of us again are astronomically small. So, it's very likely that nothing any of us ever does in life after this will matter as much to as many people as this cripple porn game. That gives some really strange perspective to the past five years.

Tomorrow's post will be the final part of this series.

- Aura

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Winter Wolves: Professional developer’s look at Ren’Py

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:54:45 +0000

In the image above, some Ren’Py code (people familiar with python might recognize some keywords/syntax) from my current project Loren Amazon Princess in my preferred editor, SciTe.

Ren’Py was created by Tom Rothamel, as a tool to help everyone to create visual novel games, with very little or no coding knowledge required. I first learned and started using it around Summer 2008, and since that year it has evolved quite a lot. So it’s been 3 years and half since I started using it, and right now I can prototype many games rather quickly, even if works better for certain kind of games: heavily story based, with no real-time animations and of course 2d, since Ren’Py is a 2d game tool.

Currently Ren’Py is available for PC, Mac, Linux and is still experimental on Android, though it should be available sometimes in the future. There’s no iOS version planned at the moment of writing, even if the author seems to be thinking about it.

The language

Ren’Py, as the name suggest is based on Pygame and Python, which I consider the most advanced language available today. Simple, concise, but at same time powerful and easy to use.

It was love at first sight for me: I was used to type the Divine Comedy in C/C++ to load a .csv or do string operations, and when I realized how quick was to develop with python I immediately started to learn it, and it was very simple process (thanks also to the online documentation).

Ren’Py is NOT a visual tool. You don’t use the mouse to place UI. You use an IDE, currently available are SciTe or Jedit. This might discourage many people who first approach it, especially if they’re not coders but are used to play with Flash, Gamemaker, Stencyl or other visual creating tools. However, you soon realize that for certain kind of games there’s nothing better than Ren’Py and you don’t actually need a visual editor at all.

As I said the language was designed with visual novels in mind: though you can use it also for any story-based game like dating sim, RPG games, or adventures with some extra coding.

Recently a new Screen Language and ATL (Advanced Transform Language) were introduced, making the creation of interactive screens and special effects (zoom, rotation, movement, etc) even easier.

The Good

Very simple cross-platform capability. Since python is an interpreted language, this means that you can build the game for the three platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) with ONE CLICK. This is simply amazing! And you don’t have to worry for different behaviors: if the game works in one platform, it will behave the same in another. This was a big plus for me since I was used to have mysterious bugs on Mac when coding in C and Xcode, that weren’t present on PC.

With Ren’Py, I went as far as copying new .rpyc (Ren’Py compiled source scripts) directly into the zip (Mac version) or the tar.gz (Linux versions) from my Windows computer, without rebuilding the games and it worked, I didn’t encounter any problem. So for example you can develop for Pc, Mac and Linux without the need to buy a Mac or have a machine with Linux installed.

Powerful language and syntax. The language is really simple and intuitive. Remember that it’s a tool specialized for Visual Novels, but you can effectively write most 2d games with it. Probably the only ones that I wouldn’t reccommend coding are those who rely on real-time movement, like a RTS, shooter, or similar. Note that is still possible to make that kind of games, but I would pick another tool honestly.

Still for any other 2d game it’s really a great solution. Very strong GUI system, combined with the ease of use of python makes this a great tool.

Easy to debug. In most other languages, debugging is a pain. Not just finding the bug, but finding out which line of code cause it. With Ren’Py thanks to Python you get very detailed crash reports, telling you exactly where the problem is.

Magic reloading and rollback system. Those are without any doubts the BEST features I’ve seen in ANY 2d development engine. Not even Unity has something so powerful. What is that, you might ask? First, the reload: since python is a scripted language, you can ANYTIME (and I mean literally anytime) hit shift+R and see immediately the changes you’ve made to the current screen.

The rollback system instead is something inherited by the visual novel mechanics, but that works surprisingly well even to debug. In practice, the program stores the path you have choosen, and memorizes XX amount of “steps”. This was doen so that the player could “rollback” with the mousewheel or keys, to a previous situation in the game story. But it works even for coding!

Trying to explain better: if you start the game, then visit in order: screen 99, do action 32, screen 32, click button 2, screen 12, type your name, screen 42, click button 5. Can you remember that? the game can, and provides you with a way to go back, a sort of “Undo” but you can use it when directly playing the game in debug mode!

I know that even in Unity you can modify the game world with the 3d world editor and see the changes, but here I mean something different: you can see the changes without having to EXIT the game, and restart.

A few simple examples:

case A: you’ve been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You see a visual bug. You look in the code, find that a button was aligned badly, change the code and reload. You see the change immediately, and go on testing. “Flawless Victory”.

case B: you’ve been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You click “done” and the next screen crashes. Thanks to Python built-in descriptive crash you see where the problem was, in previous screen you assigned a impossible value. You do a rollback, in practice executing an Undo of all executed code, then fix the bug in the source with the game still running, reload, and go on with the testing. “Epic Win”.

And the documentation? it’s good, at least for the basic features.

The Bad

As I said, there’s no editor apart an IDE. There is no intellisense/code completion, and you cannot browse classes or labels (some people managed to use Eclipse or other tools for python to code with it, but it’s definitely a hack). This is definitely something that could be improved, since in particular in the first weeks of use you can’t remember all the commands by memory and you’ll be looking at the documentation extensively.

Bad documentation for the most advanced features. How does Sprites work? What is im.ConditionSwitch? and so on. The documentation explains everything, but sometimes seems written like if the author assumes the reader is a good coder/clever as him, but often that’s not the case I consider myself an average coder but surely not a beginner, and sometimes I have hard time to understand how some of this stuff works. But it’s not bad as it was in the early days when documentation was really scarce!

It’s an hobbyst project. Don’t get me wrong: the author is doing an awesome job trying to reply to all the support requests, mainly done through the specific Lemmasoft forum dedicated to Ren’Py. However it still is, at least for now, an hobbyst project. The author doesn’t make any money from it, and so obviously there’s no guarantee that you’ll get an answer to your question. I repeat, he is doing the best he can, and sometimes other people help answering the most common questions, but still you must not expect to get immediate responses to your problems.

Personally, I’d love to see Ren’Py become a professional tool, with full support of deployment for Android/iOS, and maybe future porting to HTML5 and more. I am sure many other gamedevelopers even outside of the “visual novel / dating sim circle” would pick it up because of its features.

In conclusion

Ren’Py is a tool with double face. If you want simply to use it for what was made for, it will do the job without problems and is simply the best visual novel/dating sim system around, at least for desktop computers.

If you’re a more advanced coder and want to build simulation games, strategy games, rpg games, or any 2d game that doesn’t need a lot of things moving on the screen (but even in that case, you could make it) you’ll be surprised by the ease of use and powerful features that Ren’Py has to offer, combining the power of Python with one of the best GUI / scripting systems I’ve seen in modern 2d libraries.

Yes, to use it in advanced mode it has a steep learning curve, but once you get the grasp of it, is really hard to get back to… anything else. I had to do some C coding last week, and wondered why the “rollback” wasn’t working, or why I couldn’t just hit Shift+R to see instantly the changes I’ve made!

At least this was my experience. If I was able to release 12 games in three years and half (almost one every 4 months) it’s only because I discovered this powerful tool. Thanks again to Tom Rothamel for the incredible piece of software he managed to create!

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: You're Doing it Wrong (But That's All Right)

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:31:38 +0000

Since the release we've gotten quite a bit of questions from people who want to make a VN of their own. Can you tell your secrets? Any tips for beginner creators? Well, sure. We really have gathered a ton of collective know-how about making VNs, plus another ton of theory on the subject. KS was a very unique project, and many of the lessons we learned probably are applicable only to a project like KS, or even more specifically, only the 4LS. Other things are so very fundamental lessons that they are not really worth regurgitating every time someone asks for tips. Of course, between these two extremes is a ton of useful stuff we learned (mostly about how not to do things). Based on this one project, there's really not much we have to teach to anyone, only anecdotes of what worked for us and what didn't, so I'm not going to even attempt. I think though, that if we were to do another large-scale VN and actually manage to apply all the lessons we've learned, it'd definitely be a lot smoother ride than KS was, and would likely (hopefully!) be a considerably better production.

Anyway, to give some examples I'll try to explain some design and development decisions we made, and now with perfect hindsight, maybe figure out if they were good or bad ones.

Five writers, one game

Every path in KS is primarily planned and written by a different writer. We of course collaborated heavily and helped each other, but that is the basic setup. Doing this gave us a couple of advantages, at a significant cost for overall consistency. The diversity increases the likelyhood of any given reader liking at least some part of KS. Some people love the romantic and soapy Lilly path, others really get deep into the cerebral Rin path, and so on. Of course, the diversity also increases the probability that any given reader won't like all of KS, but there's nothing wrong with that. The primary advantage however, is the increase in focus for the writers. Being able to concentrate mainly on one story definitely improved the quality of each of them, and made each individual's writing process more independent of the rest of the writing team.

I think our solution worked really well for a project like KS, but it would be nigh-impossible to pull of with many other kinds of stories. Something we probably should've done was improve our scenario planning before actually writing anything, to bring the stories a little bit closer together than what they ended up being. With Act 1, we experimented with one writer coming up with the entire scenario and everyone else writing scenes to fit into the overall framework. That worked okay for us too and resulted in a more coherent story within Act 1. Still, I'm not sure if we'd want to make a full game with that writing production concept and ultimately, having just a single writer is almost always superior to any other number.

Double-triple-quadruple-idiotproof

The first year of KS project was a real struggle. We kept losing people, especially artists, and getting a full stable team was just seemingly impossible. Even after the 4LS team got stable, there was always the risk of losing people to random circumstances. Nothing ever tied any of us to the project, except our desire to work on it. A huge amount of projects like KS fail because of people quitting, so we wanted to minimize the risks.

If you look at the art in KS, you can fairly easily see it's done by multiple people. The artists were distributed similarly to writers, one per each girl, but they all also collaborated across paths and on single images, and every path has art from each of the artists which sometimes can make the reader do a double take at the style shifts. Production-wise, a more optimal distribution would've been to have one artist do all the design and lineart, one the digital inking and the rest be colourists, with maybe one doing the final effects. This would've made the art in KS a whole lot more consistent. So, why did we do things the way we did?

Because it gave us a fail-safe with the art. If one of the artists would quit, the others could pick up the slack with less trouble than if we had put all our eggs in one basket. Putting ourselves in a situation where a critical job is down to one person would set us up for a gigantic failure. Imagine, our sole character designer and liner getting run over by a truck after 2 years, her work half-way completed. That'd mean that ALL the art up to that point would need to be discarded and started again from scratch. We simply could not afford that possibility.

We applied the same approach elsewhere in the production as well, and generally, thinking like this was a big part of why 4LS stayed alive and why KS got released despite the insanely long development cycle and all the difficulties.We always tried to put the project first, the product second, and the egos last. KS is by no means perfect, but it's a great deal better than having no game at all. From mid-2008's onwards, the structure of 4LS was such that we could survive any single person quitting, though an event like that would obviously make things harder for us.
The above two points maybe illustrate what lead to KS's maybe most immediately "amateurish" aspect: its internal inconsistency. A lot of it was simply a result of us trying to ensure that the game would get finished, and maximizing certain parts of the production.

Keeping it real

We wanted to make a Visual Novel, but we also had some ideas what we'd want our VN to be like. Getting our ideas to mesh together and develop took its own time, many nights of long discussions, false starts and brainstorming. I guess the main goal could be described as some kind of "toned down ren'ai story". We wanted the story, characters, relationships, the role of sex and so on feel more natural and less plastic than it often is in these kinds of game, while still keeping the feel of the genre KS is in. We had both successes and failures with that, but overall I don't think anyone is unhappy with how KS came out. Presentation, art and music followed the same school of thought.

Meritocracy and herding cats

4LS did have people with titles like "producer", "head writer" and "director", but we did not have strict hierarchy. Nobody was anyone's boss, everyone had a lot of autonomy over their own work and disputes were resolved through gentlemanny discourse and wit (and sometimes other things). Having no strong leadership was a part of the "failsafe" line of thought, plus we worked more comfortably without the necessary bureaucracy that comes along with it. It had downsides too. Organization and communication was something we did struggle with a lot throughout the project, and never really managed to get it down. I'm sure the lack of anyone to enforce us to communicate better and follow deadlines was a part of this. If we were to do another production, this would be the area we'd have to improve in the most, and possibly change our methods.

5 years

KS took way too long to make. However, much of that time was sort of hot air. Roughly: It took us 1 year to get our core team together (4LS was formed half a year after project started and delta, SC, Nicol, Suriko, and all the artists joined within the following 9 months), 1 year to learn the ropes and figure out what to do and how, and 3 years of actual production of which maybe 1 year or so was wasted time because of real lives, us scrapping and redoing content and whatnot. So, a more optimized 4LS that does everything right might only spend as little as ~2 years to make something like KS. That feels acceptable to me. We had to learn a lot of things, mostly through trial and error, and doing this only as a hobby on our spare time made the development really difficult sometimes. There was just no way around these things, and while we might've been able to get the game done faster, I don't feel too bad about taking so long.

So, if we had to do these decisions again, would be go about making KS the same way? In many cases, probably not, but I would like to think that we managed to pull off some parts of the production pretty well, for a ragtag bunch for first-timer novices at least.

- Aura

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Aurora Fall: ( 2 / 35 ) : Black Pencil

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:17:40 +0000

In the last post, I introduced the concept of the blog, the idea of the Original 22 as well as giving an overview of Aurora Fall. What was promised was an analysis of the themes present in each of the Original 22 works, in single posts. This is the first of such posts, explaining the first work, Black Pencil. Please note however, that the below text contains spoilers for Black Pencil (first section) and for other Original 22 works in the second “Connections to other Original 22 works” section.

Loneliness

Because a kiss is normally the culmination of two people getting closer and closer as time goes on, it may be that the first kiss of Yuki and Kiyoshi will be seen in that romantic context. It’s the middle of the night, they are in an empty building, confined to the small space of a stuck elevator. They have met during their night shifts, and that accidental situation moves their relationship to a stage where they are more comfortable with one another and willing to share their first intimate moment – a kiss. This starts the formation of a relationship, their connection deepening with every subsequent day.

But the connection that Yuki and Kiyoshi have at the time they kiss is deeper than what they would normally have developed by being together the way they have since they first got to know each other. And this connection isn’t based on the fact that Kiyoshi has nightmares where Yuki dies and thus feels closer to her. The connection – the reason why their kiss felt to them not just as a romantic climax, but also as something more – is a realization. It’s the realization of both of them, that for as long as they can remember, until that kiss, they have not been aware that all that time they have been lonely.

The scene in the elevator, the heart of Black Pencil, exists to make them aware of it. It brings together two lonely people, puts them in a people-less environment (the company at night), into a situation where they are alone with no one but themselves (being in an elevator), and with time virtually stopping (stuck and waiting for an indeterminate amount of time). Yuki and Kiyoshi are still lonely, because they don’t yet have a true, full relationship, yet they are now also alone together, which makes them realize their loneliness. They are now feeling not just their own, but also the other one’s loneliness.

I let her come to me.
She touches me.
Rests her head on me.
She must be dead tired.
I lean on the elevator wall, because I am dizzy again.
Yuki…
I am… lonely too…

It’s the physical nature of a first kiss that expresses feelings, which for the first time is able to make them realize and understand that what has been hidden from them by their mind. The situation itself – being stuck in an elevator – is not romantic by itself, it is the awareess of their own and the other one’s loneliness that creates the romance of that moment. And after their bond becomes clear and conscious to them, it will, with time, grow into love, and love within a relationship. And when they are finally together, the romance of Yuki and Kiyoshi will always be the subconscious fear of losing the other one and being alone again.

The story goes on to ultimately allow Kiyoshi to save Yuki from her fate he saw in his dreams, if they form a deeper relationship which makes them aware of the source of their romance (symbolized by two “together” decisions and one “lonely” decision). This means you, as the player, need to be “mean” to Yuki once, otherwise a romantic relationship will not happen. This appears to be a paradox, since the one you like should always be treated nicely. But the story’s choices aren’t there to be logical – they are there to be symbolic, because Black Pencil does not exist to tell the tale of a mistyped year. It exists to express the romance of loneliness.

Connections to other Original 22 works

Loneliness would become a recurring theme in other Original 22 works as well. Almost all of the main protagonists in the other works are noticeably lonely, not least because of the implication in all but one of the Original 22, that none of the protagonists or the people featured significantly in their stories (such as romantic pursuits) were ever in a relationship or love before their interactions with said people.

Possibly the most intensive cases can be seen in Embraced By Green, when Yumiko and Etsuya decide for the first time to spend time together outside of work and both of them at that moment are being made aware of the way they both live. Loneliness is also at the centre of the “company party” scene in Ori, Ochi, Onoe., in the way that Onoe expresses her discomfort with all other people, save for the protagonist, Yoshiyuki. And although many more scenes or moments like that could be found in the Original 22 works, it is only in Black Pencil where loneliness is the true theme, the feeling that is was meant to express with its existence.

Apart from this, there is also one relevant element, pertaining to the way the game is structured. You influence the relationship of Kiyoshi and Yuki through a series of choices. To get to the “good ending”, you need to give one negative response and two positive ones (their point described earlier). Finally however, the last choice should always be “happiness” over “love”, a prelude to the point of Transfer Teacher (which is a work that has “happiness” as its main theme) and to the philosophical implications of Gakuen Redux for Aurora Fall (both of which through their characters have variations of the situation where a proof of the non-existence of love is deemed too de-stabilizing for the psyche and thus either ignored in favor of other feelings (Gakuen Redux), or expressed through someone who is not the protagonist (Aurora Fall).

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Who We Are

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:41:17 +0000

I call myself Aura. But that's not who I am.

Aura is nothing but a name for me compartmentalizing myself. There's nothing special about that, of course. Everyone does that every day, in many different situations. An internet persona is just a very concrete example, one that I like. Most people who know me as Aura don't know much about my "real life", and most people I deal with in real life don't know who Aura is. Look at my twitter account. It's not mine, it's Aura's. People who follow it are people who know me as Aura, and I follow only people I know as Aura with it. Look at the illustration above. Aura even has a face of its own, a cute anime girl, the result of our capricious artists thinking that I definitely should be moe.

Identity and the separation of "personality" from "person" are some interesting things to think about. This project brought together a lot of different people from different walks of life, all around the world. We've had to get accustomed to each other, to cooperate, to meld ourselves into a team instead of a collection of random people on the internet. Along the way, a whole lot of things have happened.

We've graduated from schools, enrolled in new ones, found new jobs and gotten promoted in old ones. The youngest of us have grown up, the oldest have become even older. We've fallen in love and had our hearts broken. We've made new friends, we've gotten married and had children. We've seen seasons change and celebrated birthdays, Christmases and New Years.

We've also written scenes, drawn CGs, composed music, coded functions. We've debated, argued, discussed, theorized. We've fought with each other and we've made up. We've seen people depart and we've seen new people come aboard. We've celebrated milestones and releases, worried about setbacks, tracked progress and pushed ourselves forward endlessly.

For five years we've lived parallel lives. We've shared some bits of these things with each other, and shared some bits of our experiences with KS with real life friends. But our two lives are still parallel. Being in 4LS has been a part of my life, yet somehow apart from it. Maybe it's been a similar experience to the rest of us, maybe not.

So, who are the Four Leaf Studios? These people I've been with for five years and done all these things with? We've traditionally been quite private about ourselves and stayed out of the spotlight. So it might be that maybe even I don't really know, but I can share some of my impressions.

Hivemind is an interesting mix of intellectual and everyman. He has constantly this relaxed air around him, but every now and then he'd bust out his scholarly side and engage us in most interesting discussions. His writing style is the most unique of the 4LS writers, something that we feared would cause trouble, but eventually just rolled with. Hivemind was the writer our head editor Silentcook got along the best with, probably because he was the only one who didn't constantly troll SC with ineptitude.

Every now and then Suriko carried the entire project on his shoulders. He always placed the success of the project above everything else, and when nobody else could, it would ultimately be down to Suriko to keep our shit together. He is a shy romantic (ladies!) who tended to get teased about everything we could use against him, but also a honest, stand up person who could hold his own against anyone and never give up.

A22 is really, really smart. He's also immensely combative and prone to obsessions, and simply talking with him could often be a struggle. As a writer he's something like a word sculptor, carefully shaping sentences until they are perfect to his liking. This could sometimes take quite a while to happen. He and moekki had a stormy writer-artist relationship that went to absolutely ridiculous extents at times, including art sometimes dictating the writing, instead of vice versa (as was the case with the other writer-artist pairs). I don't even try to understand their friendship anymore.

Cpl_crud is of very opposite nature to writers like me and A22. He is extremely intuitive and easily gets into the "flow", but sometimes frustratingly indiscreet and careless. Nevertheless, working with him is an absolute blast. Crud's vocabulary is hilariously wide and he's not afraid to use it, to the point that we had to use the standard 4LS mass mocking tactics to get him to write in 2000's American English instead of 1800's Victorian English, like he occasionally tried to (Suriko is also guilty of this, there's something wrong with our Australian writers).

Silentcook was the voice of common sense in the writing team. Or that's what he'd like to think at least. It's true that when people started getting too ambitious ideas, or too unfeasible plans, he'd be the one to throttle us down. Sometimes with threats of brutal violence. Aside from that, he worked like a machine. Nobody ever had to worry about SC's throughput or quality of work, and that is quite something in a project like this.

Delta demanded a lot from everyone, but the most from himself. The problem was, while he frequently could do the seemingly impossible, the rest of us couldn't always follow suit. Delta is a man of principle and incredibly headstrong, so getting into arguments with him could be exhausting, and nobody wanted to make him truly angry. Delta is also a visionary, the true force behind many of the things that make KS as great as it is, and likely one of the most capable VN directors in the world. He and I always got along really well, and many of my favourite memories of the past years are of things we did together.

Moekki worries a lot about everything and everyone. When things were not going well, she was the first one to get stressed over it, and when things were going well she'd invent something to worry about anyway. Moekki has a huge heart and she put all of it into the project. Like Suriko, she always would hold the project first and everything else second. Moekki was the unofficial art supervisor (easily the most ungrateful job in 4LS), probably the most productive artist, and a sort of a counterbalance to delta. Of all the people in 4LS, she's easily my closest friend.

Due to her busy real life, kamifish stayed aside from most of the development, really only participating in the production side and keeping contact down to minimum. This spawned a running joke about her actually not existing at all. As my partner in crime in creating the Rin path, we did spend time together visioning the imagery of the CGs, Rin's looks and so forth. These sessions were remarkably one-sided. I would spout ideas, references and concepts in a full on torrent of my stream of consciousness, and kamifish patiently listened, asked for clarifications, and finished with something curt like "I can do that". That meant that a decision was made and she'd go on to draw it, sometimes in insane 12+ hours art marathons.

Raide is infinitely curious and industrious. He wants to learn everything about everything and is never too lazy or careless to not search for sources, confirmation or further information. He keeps track of a huge amount of stuff, and has his fingers mixed in quite a few things outside of 4LS. I have no idea how he has the time and focus for all the stuff he does. While the entirety of 4LS likes being self-deprecating, Raide is sometimes too serious about it (like he is about many things).

Pimmy is the conscience of 4LS. She had zero tolerance for what kinds of assholes we could be to each other at times, and really dislikes fighting. She really just wants everyone to be friends with each other, and could get somewhat upset at times by the rest of us. Prone to anxiety and fretting, with tastes that got her A LOT of flak from the elitists, Pimmy is the most in touch with her inner child out of us. When she grows up, Pimmy will be the princess of a magical kingdom.

Weee has grown a lot. It's odd that it's the first thing that comes to my mind, but she really has grown remarkably both in character and in talent from when she joined the joined 4LS, at the young age of 14. The other remarkable thing about weee is her incredible passion for art. Do you want to get good at drawing? Do what weee did, spend a couple of hours drawing every single day for 5 years.

Climatic is the official 4LS curmudgeon. He played the devil's advocate in pretty much every discussion, or if not, ruthlessly mocked anyone who was even cautiously optimistic and/or enthusiastic about anything at all. Of course, he's also a true artist in a team of artists, in both good and bad.

Mike Inel is a professional. He has absolutely insane work ethic and endless enthusiasm and ambition. There was simply no way to suggest something that was too difficult to him, he'd not only happily do it, but always would try to one-up the suggestion by making it just a little bit fancier. Mike is way too humble for his own good, and he calls everyone else in 4LS "sir" or "ma'am".

Kagami is Silentcook's underling, probably the only direct hierarchy in all of 4LS. He's unassuming and quiet, but attentive (as a good editor should be), and has a habit of coming up with really sharp-eyed commentary out of nowhere, because he speaks up so rarely.

You know those people who are called "gifted" because they seem to excel in what they do completely effortlessly? That's Nicol. Give him a few words of description, a couple of hours and he'll compose something really nice for you. He was so productive that for several years, he went from project to project in the OELVN scene, leaving behind vast amounts of compositions and soundtracks (he was mockingly called "bike" for this). Nicol likes being abrasive, but is actually a nice and smart guy.

Yujovi is the mercenary of 4LS. Somewhat akin to kamifish, he appears in time of need, does the job he's required of, and disappears. Forever remembered for his (mis)adventures with women and uncanny ability to find pretty much any location we needed for the backgrounds.

And then there's me.

- Aura

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Visual Novel Reviews 4: That Cheap and Sacred Thing

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:25:31 +0000

Traffic’s gone down on the blog since last week. Bummer. I blame that on lack of updates, and lack of me writing a continued Katawa Shoujo review and more impressions. Sadly, I haven’t had the time nor privacy to 100% complete it yet.

Since college has started, I’ve actually had less time available for visual novel playing and reviewing than I thought I would. Things will calm down eventually. Also, the internet sucks so bad in my dorm that it takes hours to download projects that would’ve taken me only minutes to get at home. Things aren’t looking so good.

Luckily, I downloaded a few games that piqued my interest before I left, one of them being That Cheap and Sacred Thing, by carosene [DA] (who won Rookie of the Year in another VN blog’s 2011 award ceremony, congrats). I remember playing an early version of this game years ago. The file name was called TCAST back then, too.There weren’t any pictures in that version, but I do remember it being a science fiction love story that got my attention. I wasn’t sure that the project was going anywhere, but, surprise! In my absence, it did.

The game folder comes with some screen shots and CGs in it. I tried to avoid looking at them, but I couldn’t help it. The pictures contain spoilers, so don’t open them up until after you’ve read the story. The main menu is simple – it’s standard Ren’Py fare, but carosene makes it work. There’s even a “Bonus” button that can be unlocked upon completion. Everything’s pretty standard, actually – there isn’t any fancy customization. It’s got a very… “out of the box” Ren’Py look.

You play from the point of view of Autumn, a girl that’s never let go of her friendship with her favorite android, Elly, to the point where she’s never gotten a replacement ‘droid. Androids? Yep. You see, Autumn lives in a world full of robots and androids that look deceptively human, manufactured for specific purposes. MyPals – protectors of children, MyServants – almost as cool as Rosie the originator, AmorBots – rental robowhores, EternaLovers, GuardBodies, and more; you want it, they got it.

Her world’s full of robots that look deceptively like humans, manufactured to carry out certain tasks. Unfortunately, she’s not allowed to have any of them become “committed” to her (that’s when they establish a “love you forever” bond with their owner) with a real personality, because of a past accident that happened with Elly.

Like a boss, she’s always kept Elly’s backup disk with her, for sentimental reasons, like celebrating their best friend anniversary. And since their BFA is also Autumn’s birthday, a bunch of her friends throw her a party, and surprise her with a 24 hour AmorBot. Not happy about it, she agrees to spend time with the robot just so their money doesn’t go to waste.

Wow. The artwork for Elly’s “accident” was excellent, by the way. Shocking. Brilliant choice in coloring it so starkly. Well done overall for all of the pictures, actually. The art team included Leaux, Ashley Coulter (backgrounds), Verity, Morhigan, and Sena. I also liked the music, done by Shadelight with a couple of Kevin McLeod pieces thrown in, a lot. They all fit with their scenes. Congratulations to everyone else involved (sorry for the cop-out on not listing everyone’s names, I’m a zombie right now).

The ending hit me hard. I had a feeling that it was g oing to happen – it HAD to, but I couldn’t help feeling genuinely sad for both of the characters involved. I think I understand why this game resonates with people so well. It really does pull at your heart strings. Even now, I feel like I’ve taken a punch to the stomach, in a good way. I can’t think of many good ways to feel punched, but this is one of them.

Once you beat the game, you can see a variety of game bonuses, including an art gallery, thoughts about & analyses of the game from carosene, and a look into Darlings Lost, carosene’s seemingly permanently hiatused game (don’t worry about it, real life happens). Oh, and since you asked, carosene, I’d definitely read a sequel to TCAST, ero or not.

I liked how the story included Autumn questioning her own humanity, especially when it comes to something as extreme and nebulous as love. There’s a lot of layers to TCAST, and I really appreciated that. It really makes you take a step back and think. It’s the type of story that makes for a good and complicated conversation starter.

You can look at bigger screenshots here and download & discuss it here.

CLANNAD -The Past Path-: Scope Games Blog

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:30:06 +0000

There is now a new blog for Scope Games and other titles that have been released by the company. Check it out here:

http://scopegames.wordpress.com/

Note: There is currently a new visual novel in development!

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: A Long History of Katawa Shoujo: part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:52:09 +0000

Back when we released Act 1 I decided to write up the history of the project, mostly for posterity. I recounted all the stuff that had happened between RAITA's pic being posted on 4chan and Act 1 coming out in one long, long writeup. It felt like something worthwhile to do, and the post has since been referred to countless of times. Though I already dread to take this up, I'll now tell the latter part of the story of Katawa Shoujo project.

So, let's go back in time to 30th of April 2009, the day after Act 1 was released:

The release of Act 1 spawned a whole lot of buzz. We got kind of caught off guard by the huge popularity and overwhelmingly positive reception, none of us expected anything like that. Instead of getting discussed only on 4chan and some other places we expected KS to spawn vague interest in, it spread like a wildfire through the internet. For some weeks afterwards, we spent a good deal of time trying to keep track of feedback and such, and try to learn from it as much as we could. After all, Act 1 was meant as a litmus test, to see if our ideas seemed to work with our audience at all. We were glad they did.

After getting over all the release hulabaloo we got back to work. There was still a ton of work to do to get the full game finished. The positive reception of Act 1 gave us a big motivation boost, but also raised the expectations on the full game. We definitely didn't want it to be a disappointment, and it added some stress to some people. At any rate, it was clear that we were on the right track, we'd just have to keep at it.

Something else we didn't exactly expect was a flood of translation projects spawning from the Act 1 release. People wanted to translate Act 1 to dozens of languages, even ones that either had incredibly small potential readerbase or a only a small minority of audience not comfortable with English. Chinese and Japanese were the first major projects, and they would also become the two translation projects we'd grow the closest with. It was obvious there was no way we could actually manage or supervise all these translation teams so the decision was made to have them be autonomous and self-organizing, with the exception of us handling the actual releases of the translations. This arrangement has worked exceptionally well in my experience.

Crud had to quit his active developer role in the project in September. We did have a complete Hanako script (though it was later rewritten almost completely), and Suriko took up the various producer duties, but it was still unfortunate and put work on Hanako's route on backburner for a long time. We decided to rework significant parts of the game script across all paths, mostly a result of the growing ambitions and the sharply risen skill levels pretty much everyone exhibited compared to what we could do in 2007-08. It was a calculated risk of a kind, one one hand the longer we'd spend on the project the better it would become, on the other it would also increase the chances of failure. In 5 years' time a lot of things happen in the lives of 20 different people, and we've had to struggle with all sorts of hindrances that we haven't been able to predict or control at all. Scrapping large amounts of work was a big risk, and like with the final rework of Act 1, we debated it heavily.

December saw the completion of the Chinese translation project and thus, the release of Act 1 version 2. The decade changed to 2010's, after what was a very productive first half of 2009 and a very up and down latter half.

We did not have enough active artists to work on the huge amounts of art the full game required, so we headhunted Pimmy to join 4LS in early 2010 as the Emi CG artist. Actually, it's possible that at this point we were generally undermanned to deal with the sheer volume of work that had to be done, but adding new people to 4LS would've been so unwieldy and likely even detrimental that we just slugged on with who we got. We had gotten that far already after all, if nothing catastrophical would happen we could manage with the people we had. The difficulties we had communicating between directing, art and writing created a host of problems, most of which fell down to the artists having to draw a ton of extra art.

The Japanese translation completed almost exactly a year after Act 1 release, and was a part of Act 1 version 3 along with the redesigns of Emi and Yuuko, followed by version 4 a month later for the French translation. Later that summer, crud and Suriko did a panel on KS in the Australian anime convention Manifest. It was pretty exciting, the first (and to date, the only) time any of us have done anything like that.

The 4LS roster saw its final changes around this time. Mike Inel joined 4LS in July as an animator, Blue123 quit in September and climatic from active role in November, though both of them had been fairly inactive for longer. We were starting to get weary from all the work, but on the other hand we had steady progress, and for the first time in the project's history, we could actually see the end of the road looming somewhere ahead. All in all, from summer 2010 onwards 4LS probably was the strongest we ever were. We knew what we were doing, we had relatively few serious setbacks and kept hitting progress milestones one after another. There was no question that we would finish the game. It definitely was going to happen, the only questions were how long it was going to take and how much we could push ourselves.

The year turned once again, and on the project's fourth anniversary we decided we'd try to push the game out within the year. It was a very realistic goal, though we ended up missing on that by 4 days.

Near the second anniversary of Act 1 release, a whole bunch of translation projects completed: Hungarian, Russian and German. I've gotta give to these guys, they have real tenacity. The fruits of their labour were released in Act 1 version 5 that would become the final released version. Our Japanese translation team, perhaps frustrated that we hadn't released the full game yet, decided to attend a variety of conventions, including big name ones like Comitia and Comiket. This was really cool, we thought, and commemorated the events with artbooks that were exclusive to the cons.

I had to take some leave from active developer role, unfortunately, but step by step the todo list twindled down to nothingness. The mad dash of the autumn culminated in the beta test in December that drove everyone crazy with its intensity. A release date was set, nothing could stop us now, it was actually going to happen.

The new year and the 4th of January rolled in. We were ready. We had been waiting for this for five long years. All lights were showing green, every single thing had been taken care of, the culmination of such an insane amount of work, all that blood, sweat and tears (literally all three), was going to happen. And then it did.

5 years, to the day.

It's a long time, a long story. What I've written here really tells only tiny parts of the things that happened along the way, but maybe it is some kind of a picture of what we've gone through. We can look back to this, remember all that craziness, remind ourselves why we did it (or why we should/shouldn't do it again) . We set out to make something special, but what is truly extraordinary is the story of how it all happened. However, while KS (hopefully) remains in the memories of everyone who played it for quite some time to come, we reached our last stop that exact same moment the game was released. With our purpose fulfilled, there is nowhere for this story to go on anymore.

So, that is the end of the story of this project. It's the end of all ends. Thank you for making it this far.

- Aura

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Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: The Curious Case of Mike Inel

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:04:35 +0000

There always was this delicate balance and control over what about the project was transparent and what was not. We were open and very honest about what it was like to make KS, but never wanted to really explain what exactly we were doing. Not having our work under constant scrutiny from the outside made it easier for us to work, and left all the actual content in the game a mystery up until the release.

So, when we unexpectedly got the chance to really surprise everyone with something super fancy, we decided to keep it a complete secret. This however lead to us having to hide one 4LS member from the public spotlight completely up until the release, which has been hard. To remedy that, I'm going to tell you the story of Mike Inel.

It all began from an e-mail...

Mike contacted us out of the blue, offering to animate an opening sequence for KS since he was a fan of the game. Now, there's something you have to understand here. Since Act 1 was released, we've gotten dozens, possibly in the hundreds, inquiries from people wanting to join 4LS to work on KS. We've accepted none of them. The reason for some of the declinations was that we didn't want to add features like voice acting, but in most cases we already had all the people we needed, and we had galvanized into a working unit. There was simply no need to recruit more members who we would've needed to somehow find a niche in the team for, and then get them up to speed.

But Mike could do something none us could, animation. He also was exceptionally good at what he does. And animations are something that was easy to add in the game, as they only require the technical implementation. So we got interested. We wanted him to work with us. However, we really liked the OP sequence from Act 1 and didn't want to replace it, so we started thinking if there was some other good place for animation in KS. A credit/ending animation could've been ok, but it's not really where you put your most visually impressive stuff. Animating parts of the story didn't feel like a good idea. So, we ended up with a plan for 5 short animations for the beginnings of each of the paths, sort of like second OPs. It was more work than what Mike initially offered, but he was happy to take it up. And so, Mike became the only ever member of 4LS who applied and got accepted post Act 1 release.

I can't remember how it ended up like that, but Mike worked differently from other 4LS members. Instead of the usual IRC/forums/MSN, he and I corresponded through e-mail, with the normal 4LS feedback/iteration loop going through me to both directions. Anyway, that style of communication worked nicely for everyone, as it allowed me to distill the feedback to Mike, which increased his efficiency, and on the other hand, the rest of 4LS only had to bother themselves with the bits of the animation production that were pertinent to them. I don't know if the arrangement was actually better than if Mike had just worked similarly to the rest of 4LS (likely not, at least not significantly), but it worked out so there's no problem.

We originally envisioned that the animations would be maybe like 15 seconds long at most, just little interludes that are visually striking and serve as a good way to communicate the beginning of the girls' stories. When Mike completed the first animation, Shizune's, it was something like 51 seconds long. That was, of course, amazing, but I was thinking in horror whether Mike would be able to pull off making all 5. If he couldn't, we'd have to drop them all and his work would go to waste. He wouldn't let me down, however.

Months flew by, we mailed back and forth every day, storyboards, sketches, concepts, ideas, progressing forward stage by stage. Mike's own ambitions grew as he worked, and the animations became much longer, much more elaborate and much more impressive than anyone originally thought they would be. At that time the act title cards were not done, as they were right at the bottom of the artist TODO list. We thought it would be fitting that Mike would illustrate them, to have visual uniformity, but he already was doing way more work than anyone expected. Regardless, he took up this job too.

It took almost a year for Mike to complete all 5 animations and 16 title cards. But even after all that, he wasn't done. Nope, he wanted to revise and expand some of them, and when delta suggested he reimagines the OP sequence in his own animation style, he did that too.

And so, almost 13 months, 337 emails between him and me, and the longest ever thread on the development subforums later, Mike had completed the 5 story animations, the reworking of the opening sequence and all the act title cards. All by himself.

Overall, I feel that the production of the animation sequences was easily the cleanest and most succesful part of the KS project. The unique communication style, Mike's professionalism and us having learned our lessons all made me feel really positive about our capabilities. Generally speaking, many things in the KS project were dragged down by the baggage accumulated through the years, but with the animation production we all started from a clean table, and it was a smooth, fun ride for the most part.

The best part about working on KS to me has been the people I've been working with. To me, 4LS is something really extraordinary. Exceptional individuals who I've befriended and stuck together for years, working together towards a common goal, figuring stuff out together, growing as creators together, having fun together. We always said that even if nobody would ever read KS, making it would still be worth it, and that still holds true.

Tomorrow will be the second part of a long, long story that I probably don't remember half of anymore.

- Aura

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Pegasi's Dev Blog: The Legend of Placeholder Art

noreply@blogger.com (K-chan) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:15:40 +0000

Today, your usual host Anna has been replaced by her mysterious assistant.

Right now, we're not going to discuss handy tips or show cool stuff. Instead, I'll show the beginnings of our new project... with delicious bad programmer art, fufufu~ Now you can learn how to make a good test environment while not being able to draw at all.

First, let's discuss backgrounds. Most of the time, Google can be used for simple stuff like rooms and hallways. However, with more unusual or important backgrounds, we need to make them ourselves. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about it actually looking good - as long as the important elements are in place, Anna will make something awesome out of this... eventually.

Let's look at the characters next. This is a little bit more work, since I need to think out some important stuff, such as the characters' expressions and their general poses (which makes Anna's life much easier when she starts working on the art). Still though, you don't want to spend too much time on this, so I can pick an existing sprite, do some quick editting work, and ~~ignore the large gaping hole in their necks and~~ edit them into the game.

Also, the sprites may appear somewhat familiar >:3...

There are some CGs as well, but since those are fully drawn by myself, ~~I would die of shame~~ your minds cannot comprehend them yet at this stage.

That was a rather short update, but it was fun showing you behind-the-scenes stuff like this. Now it's time for me to go back to work /o/!

~K-chan

MoaCube » News: Professional developer’s look at GameMaker

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:15:24 +0000

It’s no secret that most of MoaCube’s projects are developed in GameMaker. I’ve been using it for 7 years now. Sometimes simply to play around with ideas, but mostly for commercial projects and some rapid prototyping back during my days at Codeminion.

I’ve developed a certain love-hate relationship with the software. We’ve had some good times together, but there were times when I considered filling divorce papers and turned my head after the younger and sexier Unity. So far, we decided to stay together. For the kids’ sake, you know.

GameMaker is a rather popular tool among amateur and freeware developers, but you rarely see it used to produce commercial-quality games, and there aren’t many publications on how it fares in professional game development.

With YoYo Games trying to attract more serious developers with the release of GM HTML5 and the upcoming GM Studio, I thought it could be interesting to do a little rundown of the good and the bad in the software from the perspective of someone trying to utilize it for commercial work.

The Good:

Fast development: This was always the main advantage of GameMaker and other similar tools for me. You can develop damn fast in it. During the DBC game jams I was able to create working projects in only a couple of hours. Working as in: fully playable, with complete mechanics and already looking somewhat pretty. At Codeminion, I sometimes found it faster to show the programmer what I want using a GameMaker prototype, than to describe it and go through several feedback loops.

Being able to develop fast is crucial when you have to worry about budgets and deadlines. Of course, a skilled C++ programmer can work similarly fast in a good framework. But — well — you need to pay that programmer and spend months on developing the framework first. GM saves a lot of time and money here.

It’s very flexible and pretty capable: Think about any 2D game you like. You could probably do it in GameMaker. It’s a huge advantage over the more focused game creation tools like Ren’Py or RPG Maker. Even custom-built engines are usually done to meet needs of a particular game or genre.

Meanwhile, GM can be used to make arcade shooters, complex RTS, platformers, visual novels or any experimental game you have on your mind. Not having to learn new tools for each project saves a lot of time.

Performance is a-okay: I often hear that GM’s performance is its biggest issue. Well, hardly (as you will see later). It’s more than capable for most 2D projects. Of course, if you want to make something very technically-advanced, you probably would be better off writing your own engine. But let’s be honest — most commercial 2D games don’t need to be cutting-edge. You generally want them to work on older machines, as it’s a big chunk of the indie audience. Nice art is usually more important than pure tech-prowess here.

I consider ArcMagi and Cinders to be relatively pretty games, with plenty of effects, particles, cool transitions and such. They both easily maintain 60fps, even on netbooks or older hardware. I never really felt like I have to cut something cool out to prevent framerate drops.

I think part of the problem is that GM is very simple to use and it’s tempting to be lazy. It’s easy to just include all the art assets within the project, draw them all on the screen with tons of particles and then complain that it slows down and uses too much RAM.

Most of the slowdowns can be solved with simple optimisations and more responsible memory use. Which is something you have to consider in any commercial game, regardless of the engine. I assure you that when I was working on Phantasmat, using a much faster custom-built engine, I still couldn’t slap everything I wanted on the screen without any considerations for the lower-end hardware.

It’s cheap: Just that. It’s cheaper than pretty much any other commercially-viable engine. It doesn’t matter that much when you have budgets in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but for a small indie developer, paying over thousand bucks for Unity and a few plugins, just to try it out, may be a big deal.

It’s easy to learn: GM was designed as a teaching tool and it shows. It’s pretty easy to grasp, syntax rules are very leeway, documentation isn’t written in Klingon and there are many tutorials available. It’s something even an artist without former programming experience can pick up and use. It allows for more participation from your non-techy team members, which is a big advantage in small teams. And let’s not forget that time used to learn new tools is development time as well.

Predictable: Except for a few hurdles I’m going to list in the next section, GameMaker is pretty predictable. It’s been around since quite a while and it uses pretty low-end tech. If it works for you, it’s probably going to work for your clients as well. If it doesn’t, you can assume it’s your and not the engine’s fault with a good degree of certainty. Depending on the complexity of the project, this can shave off a few weeks or months of QA work.

Good multi-platform prospects: HTML5 exporter is already out. iOS, Android and a few others are coming later this year. Many games have been internally ported to iOS by YoYo Games already. Even given that it will likely have some troubles at start, it looks like the tool is going to get even more universal.

Lack of competition: There simply aren’t many alternatives. Coding your own engine can be superior but takes precious development time. Lots of it! Tools like Ren’py or RPG Maker focus only on a certain type of games. Construct, Stencyl and MMF2 all use visual coding that gets very hard to debug and read as the project grows. And using Unity to make a 2D game is like trimming a bonsai tree with a chainsaw.

GameMaker may not be perfect (oh, believe me, it’s so not), but it’s still likely the best rapid 2D game development tool around.

The Bad:

Bad first impression: To get GameMaker, you have to go to the YoYo Games’ website. It looks like poop. Then you download the software, boot it up, and hey — a big shocker — it looks like poop too! Gotta love that Windows95 feel!

It’s superfluous but it scares many developers and makes them waive GM as a kids’ tool. It’s not (at least not exlusively), but it certainly doesn’t make the best first impression.

Mac versions sucks like an atom-powered Dyson: No, really. It’s b-b-bad! First of all, it’s based on the GM7.0 while the Windows one is v8.1. This means that compatibility goes only one way. If you have a project in v8.0+ you can pretty much forget about porting it to the OS X. And it’s not even the biggest issue here.

Initially, it just didn’t work. As in: it was impossible to make a game in it. It crashed on every other function call, it was impossible to load a sprite with transparency, and drawing more than three lines of text was enough to slow the game down to a crawl. To be able to work on Cinders and release Magi on the Mac, we essentially had to do few days worth of QA work for YoYo Games. Got in contact with the developer, filled several bug reports, added better reproduction steps and examples to the bugs reported by other users, and so on.

It became usable eventually, but it still has more flaws than it’s worth to count. The interface falls apart, code editor has a mind of its own, and don’t ever count on error reporting to tell you what caused a crash if one happens. It’s just going to freeze or produce a bogus error message. If you know your way around GM with your eyes closed, you’ll manage. But if your first experience with the tool is on the Mac, I pity you.

It’s worth noting that the upcoming GM Studio will have an option to export to Mac and should be free of these issues. However, it’s going to be Windows only. If you ever tried to debug a game’s port without being able to work on the computer you’re making it for, then you know what that means.

True multi-platform development is said to come with GM9. ETA: chances are that if you look outside of your window when it comes out, you’ll see this.

Issues with fullscreen on Windows7: For some reason, GM gets lazy on Windows7 and doesn’t want to use interpolation for scaled image. It defaults to a basic nearest-pixel algorithm instead. It looks like this.

Why is it important? Because it happens when you run the game in fullscreen and it has to be scaled to fit the screen (you can’t possibly support every existing resolution natively). Most engines produce a slightly blurry, but overall workable image in this case. So does GM, unless the user runs Windows7 (hardly a niche).

Now, imagine you are making a casual game to sell on BigFish Games. Something GM is theoretically perfect for. You finish the game, it gets initially accepted and you receive their tech requirements doc. One of the first points is: “The game has to open and run properly in fullscreen”. Have fun.

Sprite loading issues in GM8.1: Oh, this one! Still sends shivers down my spine. Some of the Cinders pre-order owners probably remember it. Soon after the preview version launch, a large portion of users reported that the game crashes during scene loading. After some investigation, we figured that it happens on older computers, lower-end notebooks and netbooks with integrated video cards. So, about 20%-30% of our userbase. Scary.

We’ve spent two days and nights trying to reproduce and fix the issue. I pretty much haven’t slept for that whole time. After all, folks paid for a game that wasn’t working. Thank goodness it happened during the beta and not the official launch — that would screw us over completely. Eventually, Marius was able to find an old PC that had the error. After another day of testing and desperately trying to find the reason behind the crash, driven by a hunch, I decided to compile the game under GM8.0 instead of GM8.1 and see what happens. It worked!

Turns out that GM8.1 likes to crash on weaker PCs when loading larger textures. Something that probably won’t happen when you are just playing around, but is commonplace in bigger projects. It took a few weeks of bothering Russell Kay (one of GM’s programmers, a very cool and supportive fellow by the way) to get it fixed. Now it doesn’t crash, but instead produces weird graphical glitches and major slowdowns on the affected PCs. Cool, huh?

In the end, I have to use GM8.0 for all my PC releases (good thing that I kept the older version), even though I paid for GM8.1. The problem is that GM8.0 has some issues with font anti-aliasing that were fixed in 8.1 Argh!

Awkward dev schedule: You would think that the above two issues are pretty significant, and should be fixed as soon as possible. After all, loading assets and pixel interpolation can be considered core functionality.

Well, as of now, GM8.1 hasen’t been updated since several months and the programmers are focused on GM Studio and HTML5, both unfortunately based on the broken GM8.1 codebase. The fullscreen issue in particular was waived as something to fix in GM9.

It has to be said that both programmers working on GameMaker seem to be very competent and smart people. But one can’t stop wondering if they aren’t mismanaged. Focusing on new releases, while the core product is still kinda shaky, seems like a weird strategy to attract more serious developers.

Built-in editors are bad: GameMaker utilizes various built in editors for art assets and level design. They are all pretty unwieldy. It never bothered us much, as we just use normal graphics software for the art and our own solutions for level building, but it’s worth mentioning that you can’t expect to make much use of what’s already there. It’s possible to drag some objects around and make a simple game, but a larger commercial project — not so much.

Lack of portability: I said that publicly available exporters for Mac, iOS and Android are coming soon. It means they aren’t available now.

That is unless you want to go through a pretty unfavorable deal with YoYo Games (50% royalties, exclusivity, they are listed as the developer, some negotiations possible) to get your title ported. The fact that the multi-platform GM Studio is going to be based on the faulty GM8.1 also doesn’t bode well for the program’s reliability.

In general, if you consider smartphones to be an important part of your business model, I would say that using GM is too risky. At least for now.

Teamwork on GM is hard: GameMaker uses a single file for its projects. This means that co-operation with several team members and version control are a pain in the ass. GameMaker HTML5 and the upcoming GM Studio are going to store projects as a folder structure (much like Unity) so the issue is temporary.

Uncertain future: Being honest, GM is getting more and more outdated, while tools like Unity or Stencyl are getting progressively better. Latest GM releases also weren’t too reassuring, especially the Mac version. YoYo Games struggles to become profitable and focuses more and more on game publishing. It’s hard to predict what will happen to the software in a few years. It has great potential for sure, but I prefer to be cautiously pessimistic.

Summary:

So is GameMaker worth recommendation? For amateur or more lightweight indie — for sure. It’s fast and easy to use, and the above issues don’t affect smaller games that much.

For commercial projects? Not yet unfortunely, unless you really know what you are doing and can live with the problems. It’s fast, flexible and powerful enough, but you risk that one of its quirks will bite you in the ass at the end of a project, and you can’t really count on it being fixed fast.

Using us as an example, we’re happy that we picked GM for Magi, ArcMagi and Cinders. All three games work as intended without making any sacrifices, look rather pretty, were fast to code and can be easily expanded or altered. We’re especially happy with what we’ve got in Cinders. A pretty flexible visual novel engine, similar to Ren’py, but able to produce much nicer graphics, with the possibility to expand it easily with more gameplay elements. And it took less than three months to code from scratch.

We definitely see ourselves using GM for some of our future projects, especially VNs and the more experimental stuff. However, we recently pitched one of our game ideas to a few friendly companies, to secure MoaCube’s stability undermined by the Cinders delay. A bigger game, requiring at least $100k to make. We strongly considered doing it in GameMaker. It seemed perfect for the job, but we eventually decided that it’s too risky and opted to license an engine from an established game developer.

Let me reiterate: when faced with the responsibility of having to spend actual money that isn’t ours, we concluded that using a completely new engine is less risky than working in software I’ve been using for the past 7 years. It made me think. You should consider it too.

GameMaker is a tool with much promise, and may well become a viable choice eventually, but it needs more time and better handling from YoYo Games. They could probably use some constructive feedback that’s not just straight hate, so if you are a professional indie developer, consider getting in touch with them and let them know what bothers you about the software and what improvements would be crucial for you to consider using it. The guys there really wish well and deserve the chance.

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: One Week's Worth of Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:06:02 +0000

Lots of things have happened in the past five years, good and bad and everything in between. I thought I'd write about some stuff I've been holding out on, about looking back to all that has passed, and about what I feel now that we're finished. This will be a series of writings on all of these things, one post per day, for every day this week.

First of all, the aftermath of the release has been, in a word, insane. We've been absolutely flooded by all the response to the game release. Forums, message boards, email, IRC, blogs, social media... thousands and thousands of comments, thoughts and discussions. It's been completely impossible to keep track of everything, not to mention reading all the feedback and comments and whatnot and we've managed to respond to only a microscopic part of it all. There's no way we can ever take in all of that, so here's something of a response:

Thank you, everyone who wrote a comment, or a piece of feedback, or words of thanks. Thank you, everyone who waited for KS and followed the development. Thank you everyone who played the game and were touched by something in it. Thank you everyone, for all your support and love.

As for ourselves, I suppose we are trying to ride the wave still, and getting used to the feel of the project not being there anymore. It's a strange feeling, to not have to care about any of the things that were such a big deal for years and years. No pictures to draw, no words to write, nothing to review or discuss. It's all finished. Maybe it is a kind of a momentary emptiness. Some of us turn to self-reflection because of it. Some of us quickly pass through it, without worrying about it too much. Some seek to aim themselves somewhere else. Either way, I think we are quite satisfied, right now.

One other thing I'd like to comment on is the unfortunate choice of words in the release post. The announcement that we are "disbanding" has caused a lot of questions and confusion. A better word might've been "frozen" or "hibernating" or something. So what does it mean? Making KS is what we set out to do, it's what brought us together and it was our only goal. Now that we've accomplished that, the future is open. Some things are for certain, however:

1) There probably won't be any more KS. No sequels, no extra disks, no content patches, no side stories, no spinoffs. We've always felt that KS was this one game, this one project, and it seems unlikely that we would change our minds.
2) We have no plans to make other visual novels. That doesn't mean that we never will. We might, or some of us might, at some point in the future, but for now there are no plans.
3) We are not just going to disappear, and neither are the KS sites. You can still contact us just as before. It's possible that some members eventually depart permanently, but for now we all are still together.

Anyway, we are not disbanded, as in "we won't see each other ever again", we just don't have any current plans to work together.

Tune back tomorrow for the next part of this series, which will be the tale of a certain member of Four Leaf Studios.

- Aura

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sakevisual: First Look: Koda

noreply@blogger.com (Ayu) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:57:58 +0000

Phew! Last week was a lot busier than I imagined it would be. I've only managed to write about a hundred words all week. orz But it seems about time for an update, so here's another character sketch from Every Sunrise! I know you've all been wanting to see him, so here's Koda! He's never been big on fashion, but don't hold it against him. XD

Winter Wolves: 2012 Time to relax!

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:47:19 +0000

In the picture above my cat Gilda sitting over a “hot water bottle” (hope to have found the right word!).

Yes because at the start of the year, for the first time in the last four years, I got the flu and high fever! So I had to momentarily pause my work. At the moment of writing this post I still don’t feel really well, but at least it’s an excuse for typos/grammar mistakes

I think this was a sort of warning. In 2011 I worked like NEVER before, but since I’m human, in 2012 I plan to take things more relaxed. Don’t worry this doesn’t mean I won’t release any games or slow down incredibly! But thank to the effort of the previous years, I’ll be able to release new games reusing good part (or almost all) of the code I’ve already written, speeding up the process.

This is a commonly used tecnique, even in the top AAA games. Making a new game from scratch is one thing, but doing one with already a solid code base, even if of course needs to be changed, expanded, redesigned, is much faster, believe me!

Loren The Amazon Princess uses a new RPG Framework, but luckily the big part of it was written in past year by Michael (also known as “Anima” in some forums). There’s really not much work left, and what I have tested so far seems to work very well apart some inevitable minor bugs. I spent most of this week redoing several times the battle screen layout.

In the image above, an almost final GUI layout. But as the user “Foxfeeder” rightly pointed in my forums, it’s a pity to use those small portraits, when I have such well done waist-up images of all party members and enemies! So I’m going to tweak/change it again next week as soon as I can resume working.

Planet Stronghold: Warzone will obviously reuse the first game code, but with some improvements that will have a big impact on gameplay, like area of effect Psionic Powers. Even in this case luckily, I did most of the update last year, so there’s “only” the story to write and the item/enemies. Still quite a lot of work, but should be done before the year ends (don’t want to say this Summer even if I hope to)!

As promised, above you see a “sneak peek” of Joshua possible romances. What do you think? I believe the sequel will satisfy everyone and every tastes

Nicole, (the Mystery/Otome game), Amber’s Magic Shop and Roommates (set in college with all romance options available) will use Always Remember Me interface with some changes, so that each game will feel somehow unique. In Nicole I plan to put some clue system, in Amber there will be a potion brewing simulation, and in Roommates you’ll be able to take different jobs based on some of your statistics.

Heileen 3: New Horizons will use a scheduler similar to Flower Shop games. There won’t be any farming simulation, but other mechanics. Some coding will be required, but at it’s core is a Visual Novel, since the first two games were “pure” Visual Novels I didn’t want to transform it into something too complex. There will still be stats, relationship system and other things though

In the image above you see Sebastian, the “new entry” and 4th male dateable character of the game. The artist Rebecca will be working during January-April of this year on the art for the game, I saw the preview of the romance CG for John – Heileen and is very interesting

The “New” Games

If you follow me and knows all the various games I’m working on, you might have noticed that from the list above is missing both Undead Lily and Queen Of Thieves. That is because they are the games which will require more brainstorming, coding, and testing, since will use very different gameplay mechanics:

The Queen Of Thieves will use in part a map/life sim, but also several new gameplay methods. I have already in mind some interesting ideas for it, but I think will either find a coder for it, or if I need to code it myself will take some time…

Undead Lily is almost finished art-wise. It’s missing only a few backgrounds but all the character art is done. However, I have an idea on how to make it, but I am almost certain that it cannot be done with Ren’Py (maybe using some black magic with the Sprites class… but I don’t know how!). So I might even do this game with Flash or some other language. I had started making it already but I paused it, since I want to make the game the best I can.

Visual Novel Reviews 4: Katawa Shoujo – My First Impressions

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:14:18 +0000

Don’t worry – I’m not going to spoil anything here. When do I ever?

I’m not the type who would normally buy commercial visual novels. But, if I were the type, and I had bought Katawa Shoujo in a world where it wasn’t free, would I have been happy with my purchase? Yes. Definitely yes.

Having been on a number of gamemaking teams that crashed and burned because they were too ambitious, I have to give a hand to Four Leaf Studios for successfully finishing KS. Over twenty hands were involved in the five year making of Katawa Shoujo, and it shows.

Let me clarify that this is NOT a Katawa Shoujo review, at least not one written in my usual style. These are my first impressions. I wouldn’t feel right reviewing something this good without finishing the whole game. And, to be honest, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to completely review KS. This is a game that I’m playing without my reviewer hat on.

So far, I’ve gotten one bad ending, and just started Shizune’s fourth act. I’ve been impressed with this game right from the opener. You play as Hisao, a boy who has a heart attack after a girl he likes confesses her feelings to him. After spending months recovering in the hospital and finding out that he has a serious heart problem (arrhythmia), he has to go to a school for people with disabilities.

There, he can find friendship and maybe even love on five story arcs, each arc corresponding with a specific girl. There’s (okay, brace yourself for my bluntness) burnt Hanako, deaf Shizune, legless Emi, armless Rin, and blind Lilly. It’s reminiscent of Japanese visual novels in that you spend the first arc “playing the field” and figuring out which girl or girls to spend time with. The second act and beyond are focused on a girl’s storyline.

Katawa Shoujo is surprisingly sensitive in its treatment of its characters. As you play through the game, you, like Hisao, learn to see the girls as women beyond their disabilities. They’re not the tactless descriptions I gave them in the paragraph above. For example, Shizune’s not “deaf Shizune.” She’s witty with a competitive flair. As someone with my own physical, although mostly invisible, disability, I was thankful that the girls are developed characters and not simply fetish vehicles.

The game has an option for censored and uncensored, so if you’ve got options if you’re trying to avoid the porn aspects. The censored version makes the sex scenes fade away into pictures of fruit or cute gerbils. It’s kind of funny. The game has a great amount of extra features, like a jukebox, gallery, a library where you can check your progress & replay scenes, and a cinema where you can rewatch videos you’ve unlocked.

I love the music. One of the tracks, “The Student Council” theme, got stuck in my head when I was trying to sleep last night, which only happens when I like the music. The music is entirely appropriate for a visual novel, meaning that it enhances the reading rather than distracting from it. “Parity,” “Hokabi,” and “Generic Happy Music” are others that I really like.

Did I already mention that the art is awesome? Okay, if I haven’t said it already, it is. It’s the reason why I raged when I forgot to run the game in Admin mode. I must have taken around thirty screenshots during Act Two alone. Whenever I saw something I liked, I hit the “s” key. Sadly, none of those pictures saved because I forgot to play KS in Admin mode (it’s a Windows 7 thang). Boohoo, whatever. I found them again later. The art’s awesome, end of story. There’s also a ton of lovely visual tricks in the game.

The writing for Shizune’s path doesn’t blow me away, but it is pretty good. It actually does make me care about Hisao’s relationship with her. I still feel bad over a choice I made at the end of the third act – that’s how much this game gets to me. I can’t wait to keep playing. There were a couple of outlandish scenes, but I appreciated them for their comedic relief.

It’s been a while since I’ve played a visual novel that’s made me this absorbed in it. When I was playing KS around 1 this morning, I told myself that I’d only play for a half hour, then go to bed. Before I knew it, it was 3:30 AM, and I still didn’t want to pull myself away from it. That’s how good KS is.

Wow, it turns out that I wrote a lot more than I thought that I would. To sum it up – my first impressions are that this is a game that you shouldn’t miss. This isn’t just another generic high school story. It’s a lot deeper than just a “cripple school” story. Katawa Shoujo stands out, and for good reasons. That opinion might change the further I get in the game, but as of now, I’m doubtful of that.

This might be the last of the daily posts for a while. College starts up again for me on Monday, which means busy busy, and I’m going to need a few days to prepare for that. Have fun, and happy playing!

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Katawa Shoujo Released

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:05:31 +0000

After 5 years of development to the day, Katawa Shoujo is now complete.

Katawa Shoujo download links:
Torrent: Windows | Mac OS X | Linux x86
DDL: Windows | Mac OS X | Linux x86
Do not download this content if you are not 18 years old or over.
Direct download links coming back soon

The Internet, January 4th 2012 - Four Leaf Studios is proud to present the full release of Katawa Shoujo, free of charge. It's been five long years until this day, with a multinational group of twenty-one developers working on art, music, writing, programming, and direction, to say nothing of the innumerable contributors to the project both past and present, but it's finally here.

Katawa Shoujo is a visual novel set in the fictional Yamaku High School for disabled children, located in modern Japan. Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends — and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right. There are five main paths corresponding to the 5 main female characters, each path following the storyline pertaining to that character. The story is told through the perspective of the main character, using a first person narrative. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV text box.

The story of Katawa Shoujo is a long one, spanning over a decade. In December of the year 2000, the doujin Schuppen Harnische was released by the artist RAITA of circle Zettai Shoujo. One of the pages in the extras section of the doujin contained a sketch imagining a game about disabilities set in a Japanese high school. If not for later events, that may well have been the end of it. With the sticky in 4chan's anime board in January of 2007, though, interest was suddenly sparked in the idea within, and the idea of creating this game came about. After months of brainstorming, but little progress, a core development team by the name of Four Leaf Studios was formed in April of the same year. With this, Katawa Shoujo was set on the path to its final creation.

Four Leaf Studios is a volunteer group of twenty-one developers from around the world, having come together for the sole purpose of developing Katawa Shoujo. Hailing from many different countries, backgrounds, and professions, Four Leaf Studios became committed to working towards Katawa Shoujo as an entirely free game, with no money involved in the project.

With that, the story of Four Leaf Studios is finished. As a single entity, we will not be producing another game. But even though our story has ended, you will now be able to experience a new story; the story that Four Leaf Studios existed to create.

We hope you enjoy Katawa Shoujo.

Contact Four Leaf Studios:

Email: fourleafstudios@gmail.com
WWW: http://katawa-shoujo.com/
IRC: irc://irc.irchhighway.net/#katawa-shoujo

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Important: Hotfix for the Linux version available

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:47:52 +0000

ATTENTION: The Linux version has a faulty and potentially dangerous (as in, it might change permissions of more files than it's supposed to if called from the command line) launcher script. Until the full download can be replaced, please download http://dl.katawa-shoujo.com/gold/Katawa%20Shoujo.sh and replace the one in the full download (see previous post) with it.

UPDATE: The torrent in the release post has been updated. Users who have previously downloaded the Linux version may use the hotfix linked. New users should use the torrent from the release post (and will not require this hotfix).

Visual Novel Reviews 4: deIz

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:09:14 +0000

I wasn’t so sure about reviewing another game by a maker that already has a heavily established fan base, but I decided to do it anyway. deIz is a visual novel about a guy with a crush on an indie film director who goes to his same high school. It was created by Mike Inel, who wrote an apology for his poor writing right before the main menu even shows up. He didn’t even give me a chance to form my own opinion first. That’s either gonna be a good or a bad thing.

At first, the main menu is plain. As you get more endings, the menu fills up with all of the characters. It’s a nice touch. One of the best parts of deIz was the gallery feature. I hate it when I can’t look back on CGs that I’ve collected, especially when the artwork is as nice as the art in this game. There are over fifty CGs, and at least twenty pieces of “extras,” including a history of the game, concept art sketches, a look into Inel’s drawing process and an animation. The game is short enough that you can get all of the pieces in a comfortable amount of time, so the gallery alone is enough of a reason to play.

Unfortunately, as gorgeous as the gallery was as a whole, the more I played his game, what he apologized about proved to be true. The writing wasn’t gripping. I gave it a chance because of the art. The game also doesn’t have any sound. That fact, combined with the empty writing, made the game feel like it lacked polish. It felt like it was taking steps in the right direction, but it was missing extra “oomph” to put it over the top.

The endings were creative. Some of them are kind of twisted, though, namely the one with [censored] forcing themself on [censored] (play the game to find out). That one was just creepy. One of the characters has boobs so massive that it’s comical. She literally cradles her boobs in her ending. While there are a couple of sweet “that’s cute” endings, most of the others are either comedic or disturbing. Guess that’s what they mean by bad endings.

deIz is equal opportunistic with its fan service. It has something for mostly everyone. Cat ears, broken fourth walls, scary eyes, panty shots, near nudity, thinly veiled anime references, friendly curiosity, really shiney girls, and more. There are twelve different endings, and loads of pictures to see and collect in the gallery & extras screens. It turns out that an enhanced version is in the works, so keep a look out on Mike Inel’s DeviantArt page for a release date.

You can download it from here and read a walkthrough here (WARNING: SPOILERS).

EDIT: Mike Inel is also the guy that created the wonderful FMVs in Katawa Shoujo. Pretty fitting that I wrote about Katawa Shoujo right after deIz.

Visual Novels Now!: How is this going to go?

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:55:00 +0000

Just a quick note on the 2011 Best Ofs if you're not following me on Twitter then you're not going to get the 'Live' show. Around 10 PM EST I'll start putting out the winners with my thoughts with everything wrapping up around an hour or so...mainly because I'll be multitasking as I do it. After that, I'll be updating the website with the Winners and we'll be moving on to the pimping of Katawa Shoujo!

So if you're not already, follow @vnsnow on Twitter for the Live results!

Delta Dev-Blog: The last of [Delta]

noreply@blogger.com (Curry) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:30:08 +0000

With the recent flooding here in Cagayan de Oro, my dreams of making this game got crushed... so I was really demotivated and decided to stop making Delta and start over with a new, smaller game.

and thus earlier today I posted a request for somebody who can "visualize" characters from text descriptions.

now, a formal announcement for the new game project:

I am now in-need of Artists (1-3 persons ) [Commission, or non-Commission], and a Programmer.

Shoot an email ASAP at adats_a10@yahoo.com

anyway, here are the recent materials for the development of [Delta]

I hope there will be interested persons soon.

Delta Dev-Blog: New Project

noreply@blogger.com (Curry) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:39:08 +0000

Okay, I decided to play it safe now, safe and short...

I have decided to rewrite this project's prequel and do comedy.

I'll post more as soon as character concepts are done.

will accept commission artists now.

sakevisual: Hello, 2012!

noreply@blogger.com (Ayu) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:44:54 +0000

Wooo! It's time for a new year's post. Because that's what we do! 2011 was a crazy year. I've been hearing that from a lot of people, and sakevisual went for quite a ride as well. At the start of the year, Deji's computer and tablet were stolen, along with a lot of her other stuff, which unsurprisingly put a sort of pause in our projects. In March, Japan was hit by an

Visual Novels Now!: Corrections to the 2011 Best Ofs

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Hello all,

It has just now come to my attention that I've made an error with one of the visual novels and an artist tha was nominated. It was an honest mistake, but still a mistake and I want to apologize publically to Saimon Ma/Doomfest. Memo, which was previously nominated for Best Drama and Ma for Best Artist was actually originally released in 2010 and somehow I mistook it as being released in 2011. Because of this, I've had to withdraw both the nominations from Memo and Ma.

So where does that leave us? Well I've spent the rest of the night since being informed of the error going over my notes and all other games check out for one. Secondly I noticed an artist who didn't get a nod who really deserved one, so they are now on the list. So congratulations to Zaphylla, who did the artwork for Winter Wolves Always Rememer Me.

Thank you for your time and to the anonymous person who informed me of my mistake. Apologize again to Doomfest and his writing partner for Memo. Good game, it just didn't fall within the parameters.

Aurora Fall: ( 1 / 35 ) : Introductions are in order

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:03:15 +0000

My name is mikey and I have been creating visual novels since 2004. So far, I have I have produced 3 visual novels, participated in the making of 3 more, and have translated 3 others as well.

My main work however were 21 original works, which I have created and released with the help of other people many of which I can now consider my friends.

To these 21 original works now comes the 22nd, called Aurora Fall, after which this blog is named.

This is my last original work, and will complete the “Original 22″, which, in visual novel / game form, are expressing everything that I have ever wanted to express.

Why a blog, why only 35 posts

This blog will attempt to not only prepare you (the potential reader / player) for Aurora Fall, but also give you an insight into the Original 22, what they express and how the themes they portray link to one another. In themselves, all of the Original 22 works were created to be single works, meaning for a single work’s purpose to be understood, you only need to read said work – and not all of the Original 22. However, there are some connections and elements which appear in multiple works, and identifying them will make more understandable the entire scope of the Original 22′s themes, and what they are portraying.

This blog, then, will first and foremost include the philosophies with which the Original 22 were created, with most emphasis on Aurora Fall, as that is the work that contains the most of them. In addition to this, any remaining philosophies about the art form and expressions will be discussed. Think of this as something of a guide – to Aurora Fall, but also to the entire Original 22, how to appreciate them and the entire concept of artistic self-expression (one of the reasons that this blog intends to have a finite number of posts, 35).

Not a dev blog

Because most project-related blogs are “development blogs” where challenges with creative processes are explored from a human / artist’s perspective, or “promotion blogs” which build up expectations and demand by releasing partial information or previews, it’s important to know that this blog isn’t any of those. The purpose of our blog is not to record the stages of art creation, or to discuss art creation itself – it’s an explanation of something that is already existing. The Aurora Fall blog is therefore intended for those people who want to understand, rather than those who want to be informed or updated.

Why spoilers

Because of its nature, this blog will contain many “spoilers” for all the Original 22 works. It is my belief that having spoilers for Aurora Fall will not be detrimental to your experience, in fact I encourage anyone who wants to experience Aurora Fall to read this blog, which will then be made part of Aurora Fall‘s “readme” file, before you start with Aurora Fall. As for articles about other Original 22 works (they will come with a separate spoiler warning and always be single blog posts), you can choose not to read them if you plan on reading / playing them at a later date. The majority of the Original 22 works do de-emphasize the story, so chances are it is not going to ruin your experience with them to read the spoilers anyway. If you do not want to see any spoilers for the Original 22 whatsoever (not even for Aurora Fall), do not read further – and do not read any future posts on this blog at all.

Welcome to Aurora Fall

Now, a few words about Aurora Fall.

Aurora Fall is my biggest creative project to date, one that I have been wanting to create for more than 15 years now and one that has evolved and changed over the four years that it is in the making. It uses the Ren’Py engine and employs static pictures and words to convey its theme – which may lead to the conclusion that, like most of the Original 22 before it, it is a visual novel.

Except, it isn’t. And I will try my best to explain why this is the case, with the limited number of posts (this being the first of 35) that I now have left.

But back to the introduction. All of the Original 22 works have had a theme, something that they expressed. It was loneliness, love, inspiration, affection, expectation… and many more, all of which will be discussed in in the scope of the 34 remaining posts. Aurora Fall, as the last project, aims to express “beauty”.

My plan is that people spend more than 10 hours engaged with Aurora Fall. This will probably not be the maximum time that will be possible to spend experiencing everything in the work, but I think that 10 hours should be enough so that the theme can be expressed. In other words, one needs not to “finish” the game to experience the theme being expressed. This is one of the reasons why I feel Aurora Fall is not a visual novel in the traditional sense.

To support the argument, I will also point out that not all of the time will be spent reading, because partly the time will be spent by going through (let’s call them) “filler segments”, tedious and repetitive clicking tasks that have no underlying purpose to them.

There is more, though. The words that will be read on the screen aren’t part of anything I’d personally classify as a narrative, or plot, in the “storytelling” sense of the word. They simply describe things that happen, and not even I, as the author, am interested in “how it ends”. Hence, Aurora Fall does not have an ending – instead it emphasizes its “segments”. Because the story is not the point.

With that out of the way, it’s not all completely plot-free. There is some framework to the situations and moments that happen, most prominently it is the “aurora fall”, a disaster that kills all men of the world (a world which is fictional, though more or less equivalent to present-day Europe). All of the events are presented from the perspective of the protagonist Adrian Ilianu, one of only a handful of men who survived, in a society which is inevitably facing extinction. Depicted will be mainly his interactions with five specific women, and once again, on the face of it, it looks like these are the “characters” of the story. But they aren’t, because their personalities (opinions and moods) are – for all intents and purposes – never shown.

It isn’t all this clear-cut, and you could argue about semantics, but the idea is, if all this sounds very boring, it’s because it should. Aurora Fall, for most people (including me) should not be exciting or entertaining, it should not be something you “can’t wait to get your hands on”. It should be something you challenge yourself to, it should be something that you don’t necessarily like, yet the philosophy of which should inspire you to try to do something with a qualitatively similar approach for yourself – be it music, text, or any other form of artistic expression.

This is, however already getting into the ambition of Aurora Fall, which will be the subject of another post.

Meanwhile, thank you for reading and see you next time.

Visual Novels Now!: Happy New Year!

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year!

2011 is officially in the books! And we are going full-steam ahead into a brand new year! New possibilties! New challenges! And most importantly, new visual novels! We here at Visual Novels Now are geared up and ready for our first full year covering Original English Visual Novels, but before we do there is one final bit of 2011 business to finalize.

On January 3rd, we'll be announcing the winners of the 2011 Best Ofs. After carefully digging through as many releases of the past year as I could find, I've compiled the best possible list of nominees I could. Now, if someone is on the list that means their work deserves your attention and commerce. But, as the old saying goes, there can only be one! (Well, there was only one...then he took an arrow to the knee...)

One thing to note. If you see a category or two with one nominee and their names are in bold, then allow me to say to you...FLAWLESS VICTORY! FATALITY! Seriously though, when I started this process I said I wanted to recognize as many people as possible who were involved in the process of creating a visual novel. I hope as 2012 rolls in that we'll see many of these categories completely filled in for the 2012 Best Ofs, but for now I will recognize those who stood out in the indicated fields. Also, I believe in free speech and accept all critiques of my work, however if any disrespect is shown to any of the nominees/winners that comment will be deleted with no apologies.

Now with all the legal mumbo aside, here are your 2011 nominees! See you on the 3rd for the winners!

Visual Novel of the Year

Kansei (SakeVisual)
Hierofania (Ludeshka)
That Cheap and Sacred Thing (Carosene)
don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story (Christine Love)

Studio/VN Circle of the Year

Winter Wolves
SakeVisual
IDHAS Studios
Hanako Games

Rookie of the Year

'Super63' (Dusk, Lucky Rabbit Reflex)
'Carosene' (That Cheap and Sacred Thing)
'Teacup' ( (P)lanets )

Best Artist

Zaphylla (Always Remember Me)
M. Beatriz Garcia (Kansei, Winter in Fairbrook)
Auro-Cynaide (don't take it personally babe, Anton's Vacation)
Marlon Teunissen (Spirited Hearts)

Best Character

John Rook (don't take it personally babe)
'Kangai' (Kansei)
Syl Logivechk (Anton's Vacation)
Astelli (The Thirteenth Year)
Autumn Godfrey (That Cheap and Sacred Thing)

Best Original Score

Aural Wave (Kansei)
Matthew Myers & Cristina Vee (Always Remember Me)
A. Rothaus (Hierofania)

Best Male Voice Artist

Micah Solusod (Kansei)

Best Female Voice Artist

Cherami Leigh (Kansei)

Best Fanwork

Rapunzel (Starling)
Clannad: The Past Path (Scope Games)

Best Otome

Lucky Rabbit Reflex (Super63)
(P)lanets (Teacup)
The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook (Winter Wolves)

Best Comedy

My Magical Cosplay Cafe (SakeVisual)
Anton's Vacation (IDHAS Studios)
Dusk ~A Moonlight Romance~ (Super63)
Renpy Date Simulation Engine - The Game (Studio Mugenjohncel)

Best Drama

Magical Diary (Hanako Games)
Untold Myth (Dunceney)
The Thirteenth Year (Taleweaver)

Winter Wolves: 2011 The Year Of Farewells

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:09:20 +0000

This year was… weird. It was bittersweet, crazy, successful, painful, happy, sad and… the year of farewells.

This year indeed I’ve said farewell to my beloved uncle, the person who helped me to become a game developer more than anyone else since I was a kid.

I’ve said farewell to several pets: the last one, my dog Artù, just a week ago. In the picture above I’m with him during a trip to Germany.

But it was also the year I said farewell to my old car. I know it might seem stupid: but I was somehow attached to it. It was the car I had on my first date. The car I used to go at the office for my first job. Was the car I used when I gave the first passage to my girlfriend, and when I went on my first holiday trip. So many memories, mostly good ones!

I’ve also said farewell to portals: or at least, to submitting to them. I’ve come to the conclusion that they get so many submissions that unless you make a perfectly “targeted” game, you won’t have any chances. Or you need to be featured on the most popular websites, which is something that seems forbidden to me for reason behind my control. So, from now on, I’ll just save my time and take care only of my followers!

How was business in the 2011

On the “business” side, this has been my most successful year ever since I was indie. This month was the best one, despite the various indie bundles, sales, and the crisis. I really hope business will continue like this month, would help me to relax a bit!

Of course, I’m not getting too much excited. Since I know that in a fast paced technology-related business things might change completely in just a few years (or even months). Still it feels good for once not being worried to pay the bills!!

It’s interesting, if I think back about 2010 which was a rather disappointing year (mainly because of the two Vera Blanc games and Card Sweethearts, the worst-selling games I’ve ever made!). I was sad and angry because of the various failures, but I still had all my pets and my family members alive. I think this year taught me what really matters in life, not money or success – but love and being loved.

Next Year Goals

I really have big hopes for next year, since I’ll release many interesting new games of all kinds (RPGs, dating sim, otome, etc). The only thing I fear honestly, is that I might have to slow down a bit. I am not a machine, and this year for various reasons I was forced to be at home, and since at home I have my computer and internet connection… I worked! I didn’t have a SINGLE DAY of holidays. Of course I didn’t code or write all the year, but even managing people/sending emails takes lot of time.

And as a consequence I released 5 games in a year, which is something never happened before. I’ll try my best, but don’t expect 5 games next year! Even if who knows, maybe will still happen.

Happy New Year to everyone!!

sakevisual: Biweekly Poll - Explore ALL the Paths!

noreply@blogger.com (Ayu) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:07:04 +0000

I'm so excited! We've never gotten 400 votes before. : D 401 is our new record. Yaaaay! This time, I asked you guys how you play your dating sims. Only seven people said they don't play at all, but I suspect that's because most people who don't play dating sims simply didn't answer the poll. Most of you are completists, aiming for all the endings no matter what. What makes the "non-good"

Visual Novels Now!: The Most Anticipated of 2012

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:40:00 +0000

Well, the holidays are done and 2012 is right around the corner! While 2011 has been a solid year for English visual novels, 2012 is already looking to be bigger with several groups looking to take their work to another level. While there will always be a mystery contender waiting in the wings, I’ve already seen five VNs that I am eagerly anticipating for 2012 and here they are!

Break Chance Memento (Cyanide-Tea)

God I shouldn’t like this game. Just like with don’t take it personally, it’s filled with things that I routinely mock (seriously, you could mop the floor with that preening twit Shuuki’s hair). And despite knowing exactly what I’m getting into thanks to Cyanide Tea’s reminder of the BL content in this one, I really want to play it.

A lot of my attraction is based on the approach of how they’re telling this story. Not only does it involving time traveling, but it is two separate acts with two main characters. Your actions in the first act, as Shuuki, directly influence how the second act will go when you play as Natsune. To what level that is taken to still remain a mystery, but I can only imagine what one argument, one misspoken word, one night of lust for Shuuki could mean for Natsune. That, and the mysterious deaths surrounding this family, is enough to keep me waiting for news of its release.

Mitsumata (Kinou Games)

How anyone could not be intrigued by this title is a mystery to me. Kinou Games has done a great job keeping most of the work quiet by systematically cutting the world away from it, instead of constantly trying to feed us updates. Frustrating, yes, but it did the trick. Now, according to them, we are potentially months away from a release date and what they will release is, I’m convinced, nothing short of genre changing.

Not satisfied just to tell a good story, and it sounds like a very good story, Mitsumata takes elements from other genres of games to make itself standout. I’m sorry but I got to keep saying it to wrap my head around it: there is platforming in this VN. On top of that is an RPG battling and leveling system that borrows from the old-school of video gaming. This many elements in a project can tank it, but with Mitsumata everything seems to be melding together very well.

Cinders (Moacube)

Shout out to Tom: delays will not stop my interest in game. Originally planned on a Summer release, Cinders has been pushed back in order to further tweak its inner workings. But from what we know already, this will be an adaptation of Cinderella very worth of its history. Skipping past Disney, Cinders reaches into a much darker fairy tale and gives the player more than just the option of waiting for her knight in shining armor.

In the mix for this one is a more Westernized art style that already makes it stand out from an anime dominated field as well as music with a decidedly more somber flair than the anime inspired tunes you can get with a visual novel. Those choices puts it apart and keeps it on this list. Here’s to hope 2012 will be a banner year for Moacube as we get a solid release for Cinders.

Katajion Kinetic Monthly (IDHAS)

I’ll be honest, I Don’t Have a Studio Studios snuck up on me. Through my research for the 2011 Best Ofs I fell upon Anton’s Vacation and, through that, gained a healthy respect for the one they call Chief. Now, though, I think Chief’s insane…and I’m pretty nuts myself so that’s saying something. For those who don’t follow IDHAS, recently Chief has announced that he’s taking on a grand experiment. Something that he’s calling a ‘Shonen Jump of kinetic novels’: Katajion Kinetic Monthly. I’ll let Chief break it down,

“Every month you can expect to see the running series of five kinetic novels. While the roster will grow and shrink as time ticks on, you can rest safe with the knowledge that almost all of these stories are already written and the art done before we even get near the series release.”

Starting off IDHAS’ new, incredibly daring initiative are five very promising titles: Rising Angels, Pet Project, Tales of Takao, Blood of the Light and one project that remains to be titled. I’ll be honest; a part of me is waiting for the Chief to crash and burn in this daredevil-esque move. But, my instinct tells me there is something about this project that is going to be special. I’ll be reporting on the first release in the Katajion series and we will all see what happens from there.

Jisei the 3rd (SakeVisual)

If God has a sense of humor, this game will be released around the same time as The Dark Knight Rises. After a very good year headlined by the release of Kansei, SakeVisual is preparing a few new titles for us with the promise of the next chapter in the Jisei series. For those that follow the series, there isn’t really much I can say as you’re already ticking down the days to you can play Chapter 3…but I’m going to talk about it anyway!

The conflict that spanned the first two games between the two genetic heavyweights seems to be on the verge of quieting down with Biodev dealing with the problems made for them by Jennifer Bergstrom and William Auten dead. That leaves our potentially named hero with plenty of free time to deal with the mess that is his private life. Will he get a new lead on the murder of his younger sister? What will this Schultz person have in store for him now that she knows he’s alive? And of course there’s Chance's sugar daddy Shin Guan. His and Kangai’s path has crossed twice now, will the third time lead to a direct face-off? And, of course, who’s going to die next?

Elspeth's Garden: Adrift Released!

noreply@blogger.com (GDI) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:20:15 +0000

So... yeah. Grab it at multiple places if you haven't already.

Though I want to pimp this site for now (since it tracks downloads, haha!)
Artist website, dang I love her shading techniques especially.

(Oh yeah, Merry Christmas or something)

Though I've had my share of failed projects in the past, for my New Year's resolution I am aiming for a 100% completion rate in all the projects I participate in, and I think I am getting there. I want to be able to output visual novels as quickly and easily as I pick my own nose.

Among all the projects in various states of completion I'm involved with (Taleweaver is involved with 3 of them), the one currently closest to release (but which still has quite a bit of work to do) is Idoling Alice, a game whose development kinda sputtered last year. Never fear, since I will bring my own brand of 'magic' to this project based on my experience with simulation games in the past. Just graphics won't make the game nowadays, so I won't be content until the gameplay is engaging and addicting.

Dischan Devblog: Merry Christmas 2011

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:48:11 +0000

Merry Christmas! Here's a gift.

Pegasi's Dev Blog: Firefly second edition - out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:06:53 +0000

It'stime to release Firefly second edition!

Don't worry, the pricewill stay the same and people who bought it before will get itfor free.

People who bought Firefly online – we will e-mail you with the details soon!
If you bought Firefly at a convention, please mail us at pegasi(at)weeaboo.nl(replace (at) with @) and instructions will follow!

What changed?

The engine has been completely rebuild to look and work much better on slower computers.
The visual novel now runs on 60 frames per second.
The text box now switches between a small text box at the bottom of the screen and a full screen text box. The full screen text box is only used when you have long monologues.This is done so you can focus better on the sprites and other artwork.
A lot of bugs, like the small opening movie not being stable enough, were fixed.

We also fixed some wordingand typos and since one of our background music files wasn't thatgood, we did our best to improve it. It's the first music in thevideo below, in case you're interested.

Story

One fateful night, the mischievous thief Esta sets out to rob yet another unsuspecting nobleman of his riches. However, the mansion she targets turns out to be completely abandoned except for the, in her words, whiny and incompetent Yoru. Nevertheless, to her annoyance, she ends up having to take this young man along on her adventures. But despite his appearance, he might be more involved in the town's upsets than she realizes...

Promotional Video

~~Oh my god, a video!~~

Requirements

It runs on Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux and Mac OSX. You will only need Java 6 orhigher, which can be downloaded here.

Where to get it

You can buy the full version or try the demo on the Firefly project page.

If you still encounter anyproblems, don't hesitate to send us an e-mail.

Me and K-chan hope youenjoy the update! Happy Holidays! :D

~Anna

Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog: Christmas Present: Katawa Shoujo Artbook PDFs

noreply@blogger.com (Katawa Shoujo) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:34:52 +0000

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!

Four Leaf Studios, together with the Katawa Shoujo Japanese translation team, would like to give all our fans a christmas present this year. And that christmas present is .pdf versions of the currently released artbooks; the Katawa Shoujo Player Guide, and Fragments of Summer.

We plan to release a .pdf copy of Midwinter, the third Katawa Shoujo artbook, around mid-March. Those who buy Midwinter at Comiket will have the exclusivity of a physical copy, and be able to view it several months earlier than anyone else.

This was all made possible by the very hard work of the Japanese translation team, who were responsible for Comiket organisation, all physical printing and publishing work, and translation of the artist and writer comments contained in the artbooks. A big thank you from the 4LS team goes to all of you guys. And of course, a big thank you also goes out to all the artists who contributed, both developers and fanartists.

Without further ado, here are the artbooks. Have a very merry Christmas from Four Leaf Studios, and a happy new year!

Katawa Shoujo Player Guide (Japanese)
Fragments of Summer (Japanese)
Fragments of Summer (English)

- Suriko

» Discuss this post on the forums

Winter Wolves: Merry Christmas and Best of 2011

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:36:43 +0000

In the photo above, my cat Othello sleeping peacefully in a basket with a cushion

Merry Christmas to everyone! To celebrate, from today until the 25th December EST timezone, you can get a single game from the whole Winter Wolves catalog for 50% off, using the coupon “XMAS“.

And what about the title “Best of 2011″? Well in the last week I’ve seen around internet lots of “Best of…” by almost all sites. The fun thing, is that they talk always about the same games! I don’t want to argue about Minecraft or Skyrim being the best games. However, I want to remind that there are small niches, who don’t care at all about those two games, and there’s nothing wrong with it!

Personally I TRIED playing Minecraft but I quit after 5 minutes. I know many other people who did the same. Does it means that it sucks? Of course not, but while that game entertained lots of people, there is a minority (a niche) that maybe preferred to play other kind of games, maybe one of my games.

So of the games I have released this year, I want to make three “Best Of”. I talk about my games because sadly this year I was so busy with work and real-life stuff that I really didn’t had time to play accurately ANY other game (including AAA titles) so I cannot judge anything.

Best Art

1. Planet Stronghold
2. Winter In Fairbrook
3. Always Remember Me
4. Love & Order
5. Spirited Heart Girl’s Love

The first two places are very close. However, while in Winter In Fairbrook the character art by Deji is lovely as always, the backgrounds are definitely worse than Planet Stronghold ones (they also had a different budget, so it’s normal!). Always Remember Me has slightly better backgrounds than Love & Order (and same character artist) while Spirited Heart Girl’s Love had the beautiful characters drawn by Meago, but it was an add-on, so it mostly reused the old game art.

Best Writing

1. Spirited Heart Girl’s Love
2. Winter In Fairbrook
3. Always Remember Me
4. Love & Order
5. Planet Stronghold

Ok I know that everyone loves Ayu’s writing. I do too But I think that Aleema writing on SHGL was a bit overlooked because of the game theme (yuri) which is much less popular than WiF one (otome). I might be also biased because obviously I like more yuri than otome Anyway, was a close call and depends on tastes. Always Remember Me writing was nice I think, while Love & Order was good but definitely short and not well developed in the romance scenes. Planet Stronghold…<coughs> I know, that’s the weakest point of the game, but the sequel won’t be written by me, I swear!

Best Gameplay

1. Always Remember Me
2. Planet Stronghold
3. Love & Order
4. Spirited Heart Girl’s Love
5. Winter In Fairbrook

Well, there are no doubts that Planet Stronghold has the most complex gameplay, however I think that even Always Remember Me life simulation system, with the map and time of the day was not bad. A close call really, but Planet Stonghold probably was too much niche for most people. But again depends on tastes!
Love & Order wasn’t bad even if maybe a bit too much repetitive. The last two places could be considered a tie, since they were using the gameplay of the original title without much innovation.

MoaCube » News: Happy Holidays!

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:37:39 +0000

Christmas is around the corner and the year is coming to an end. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your support and wish you all a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if you so prefer).

It’s also a perfect opportunity to reminisce at the passing year. And boy — what a year it was!

We finally managed to make the transition to full-time indie and launch MoaCube. Which — who knows — may as well be one of the most important decisions in our lives. And, thanks to your support, we’re still afloat. Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe this is happening for real.

On the other hand, we failed to release Cinders this year. Showing that no matter how much you learned on your past mistakes and experiences, threading into a new territory is always much harder than expected. Unfortunately, it likely means that no matter how good the game will be, it won’t be profitable. We’ll probably have to take some more commercially-safe project next year to secure our indie-ness.

Still, I can only wish the coming year to be as exciting and challenging as this one. When the goal is so enticing, who cares if the road is a bit bumpy.

I Whine About Games: super high-school level thread posting

noreply@blogger.com (Whiner) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:05:43 +0000

This game is pretty awesome. It vaguely tempts me to work on a slightly vicious VN where the party is getting picked off one at a time (although for different reasons and in a much LESS nasty way than happens here.)

The game is Japanese-only, so most of us can only sit here reading the Let's Play. Which is still awesome!

Delta Dev-Blog: HIATUS~~~

noreply@blogger.com (Curry) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:35:28 +0000

>.>

due to the uncertainty of my local staff who got flooded last Dec.16, that including me.... who go affected so much that I can't even contact other staff members and write the remaining blocks of script...

we'll keep you posted anyway guys, but i'm really sure that we can't release the game by the end of the year.