You heard her. She is Kana.
I'm only a dozen or so hours from being at demo-stage,
but it doesn't look like the demo will be ready by this year.
December 29, 2010
December 27, 2010
Prinn Set NVZ
This is Flonne's Disgaea-based original character, Prinn:
The commissioner gave permission for her to be used in games :)
Here is a novelty-compatible actor image set:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zh3wxqgxfx7c1m6
In order to use this sprite, the file must be extracted and copied into Novelty's Asset folder.
Here is a video on how to do so:
This video is available for viewing at sizes up to 1080p!
Don't forget to give Prinn a few hits in the gallery too!
http://skimlines.deviantart.com/art/Prinn-Emotions-15-190801113
In order to use this sprite, the file must be extracted and copied into Novelty's Asset folder.
Here is a video on how to do so:
This video is available for viewing at sizes up to 1080p!
Don't forget to give Prinn a few hits in the gallery too!
http://skimlines.deviantart.com/art/Prinn-Emotions-15-190801113
December 21, 2010
Kana x 3, Oscar +1, Nick +1
 |  |  |
Kana~chan 3 poses
Happy Kana is pretty cute.
 |  |
Nick and Oscar, with two new expressions.
I'm not super worried about Oscar
since this will probably be the last scene he'll be in.
I'm still aiming for that 2010 demo release,
but I don't have any solid, day-by-day, plans.
I'm still aiming for that 2010 demo release,
but I don't have any solid, day-by-day, plans.
December 15, 2010
Have a cutscene!
I've been trying to learn to use Novelty better.
you can now import Julia with three emotions on this thread:
http://www.visualnovelty.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=681&p=3722
There's a little problem with white lines appearing on Julia's alternative emotions.
There's a little problem with white lines appearing on Julia's alternative emotions.
And a cutscene!
...that can't yet be explained.
I know have to change Oscar's face a little.
He looks strangely ugly.
The wonderful STEIG STEIN.
I was projecting to have a 10 minute demo out by the end of this month,
but between the game addictions and cold weather..
...Well, we'll see.
I was projecting to have a 10 minute demo out by the end of this month,
but between the game addictions and cold weather..
...Well, we'll see.
December 8, 2010
Julia, Oscar, Nick, and sprite recycling
 |  |  |
Three new sprites today.
The character on the right (Oscar) is a simple recolor & new clothes of Peter.
Nick's body is also slightly recycled from a previous sprite.
Looking okay in game.
I'm not really nuts about where Oscar's looking.
I had better fix him.. hmm.
December 4, 2010
Three Day Block
Ahhhhhh what is an indie gamer to do??
I have finally started to draw the next two sprites I need for the side-game.
It was supposed to only take 5 hours but it ended up taking 3 days, because I bought a new hard drive and reinstalled a new OS and blah blah blah.
(Also, every time I went to go draw it, I would end up chatting on IRC or playing a computer game instead. Whoops.)
But finally, I am getting started:
You gotta do what you gotta do.
And they are done!
OH YES, and in the game!
Looking all right.
I was worried about black-hoodie's hands,
but it doesn't look so weird since it's covered up by the text box.
And they are done!
 |  |
OH YES, and in the game!
I was worried about black-hoodie's hands,
but it doesn't look so weird since it's covered up by the text box.
December 1, 2010
Nick pondering & old man sprite
 |  |
Two new sprites for the side-game tonight.
Gosh.. dA comment was right. Old man's eyes are big.
Those filler backgrounds go along very well.
November 28, 2010
Sprites for a side-project..
 |  |
Created two sprites tonight.
They look okay on top of the filler background.
An important scene of this side game.
... when I have at least 20% of the game completed,
then I'll blab some specifics about it :)
New links have been added on the right of the layout
"Other Games & Game Engines" -->
Would you like to be linked?
Please comment with a 150x50 banner
(or, I will visit your site and make one).
New links have been added on the right of the layout
"Other Games & Game Engines" -->
Would you like to be linked?
Please comment with a 150x50 banner
(or, I will visit your site and make one).
November 23, 2010
November 15, 2010
AGS
I pretty much spent whatever time I would had spent planning for Sa'ee this week learning how to use AGS.
November 7, 2010
Confessions - Considerations
oo Even though I had set out to create a vnovel a few years ago, I am still pretty dreadful when it comes to the writing department. It really isn't that I cannot write well or that I have nothing to write, but it's that in sharp contrast to how efficiently I can draw, my writing is quite inefficient. Every story I start I restart at least a dozen times, and even then I'm left questioning whether or not that start is good enough. I think "maybe the plot needs to start earlier in the storyline than this" or "maybe I should just jump to the interesting parts of the story" and after hours and days of burning myself out thinking one of those two over and over, I just go back to drawing.. Heh.
I think I would had become a fairly decent writer who is able to only include the things that are important to a story if I hadn't moved around so much, but I guess I sort of missed my window to learn the skills necessary to write well, so now I'm struggling to learn those skills the hard way using my frustratingly-hardened adult brain. At one point I did sort things that happened around me by the categories "interesting/funny" and "boring stuff" but these days I sort information by "important/money related" and "unimportant/not money related". Ever since that change has happened in my mind it's been super tough to write any stories because I feel urged to inject every story with an annoying amount of reality.
I think for Sa'ee it doesn't need as much reality as I try to force it to have. While writing the stories I end up drawing entire town maps about what is where or family trees of every character, but I have a strong feeling that that kind of stuff is not useful for writing: it's just another way to escape writing. Or is it? Does the whole fiction world and reality factor need to be determined before a story can be written?
One of the biggest problems I have with Sa'ee is that the setting for it and the audience are alien to each other. The game is basically based on late 90s Korea, while practically the entire audience is English speaking Americans. I can deal with the English-speaking part by writing the game in English and by giving the characters English names, but the alien school system and lack of issues important to teenaged Americans (pregnancy, driving, malls, jocks, braces, prom) is probably a little off-putting to a majority of the audience. I don't want folks who play this game to feel like the game is foreign and alien to them, but I don't want to make it so American that it is alien and foreign to me in return.
Which then leads me to wonder if I should just make this entire game in Korean, or if the game would still be significant if it was in Korean. I don't have strong desires to expand into the Korean vnovel field (what with it being practically nonexistent, after all, despite the fact that all the skills necessary to make a successful game are abundant) or to gain/find Korean-speaking fans. But as for the second part...
The game, as it is, loses a lot of its significance if I write it in Korean. Korea has lots of girls-only or boys-only public schools, and those schools converting to co-ed aren't all that uncommon either. The subject has probably been touched upon several dozen times in all kinds of media. But I don't think that significance of the game in the Korean culture necessarily means significance in American culture either. Even if the game was successful in Korean, it could be pretty uninteresting in English for Americans because each culture has its own thing that it finds interesting. I've designed the game assuming that the audience would be English-speaking Americans, so I don't think changing the entire language at this point would do any good. In fact, it's just another way to start over.
So... yes, lots of thoughts going through my mind, and very little writing getting done.
Even though I'm behind in writing, I will probably still draw&stream Tuesday, 7-9PM EST: http://www.livestream.com/skims
Happy Fall-back-one-hour Day, everyone.
I think I would had become a fairly decent writer who is able to only include the things that are important to a story if I hadn't moved around so much, but I guess I sort of missed my window to learn the skills necessary to write well, so now I'm struggling to learn those skills the hard way using my frustratingly-hardened adult brain. At one point I did sort things that happened around me by the categories "interesting/funny" and "boring stuff" but these days I sort information by "important/money related" and "unimportant/not money related". Ever since that change has happened in my mind it's been super tough to write any stories because I feel urged to inject every story with an annoying amount of reality.
I think for Sa'ee it doesn't need as much reality as I try to force it to have. While writing the stories I end up drawing entire town maps about what is where or family trees of every character, but I have a strong feeling that that kind of stuff is not useful for writing: it's just another way to escape writing. Or is it? Does the whole fiction world and reality factor need to be determined before a story can be written?
One of the biggest problems I have with Sa'ee is that the setting for it and the audience are alien to each other. The game is basically based on late 90s Korea, while practically the entire audience is English speaking Americans. I can deal with the English-speaking part by writing the game in English and by giving the characters English names, but the alien school system and lack of issues important to teenaged Americans (pregnancy, driving, malls, jocks, braces, prom) is probably a little off-putting to a majority of the audience. I don't want folks who play this game to feel like the game is foreign and alien to them, but I don't want to make it so American that it is alien and foreign to me in return.
Which then leads me to wonder if I should just make this entire game in Korean, or if the game would still be significant if it was in Korean. I don't have strong desires to expand into the Korean vnovel field (what with it being practically nonexistent, after all, despite the fact that all the skills necessary to make a successful game are abundant) or to gain/find Korean-speaking fans. But as for the second part...
The game, as it is, loses a lot of its significance if I write it in Korean. Korea has lots of girls-only or boys-only public schools, and those schools converting to co-ed aren't all that uncommon either. The subject has probably been touched upon several dozen times in all kinds of media. But I don't think that significance of the game in the Korean culture necessarily means significance in American culture either. Even if the game was successful in Korean, it could be pretty uninteresting in English for Americans because each culture has its own thing that it finds interesting. I've designed the game assuming that the audience would be English-speaking Americans, so I don't think changing the entire language at this point would do any good. In fact, it's just another way to start over.
So... yes, lots of thoughts going through my mind, and very little writing getting done.
Even though I'm behind in writing, I will probably still draw&stream Tuesday, 7-9PM EST: http://www.livestream.com/skims
Happy Fall-back-one-hour Day, everyone.
October 27, 2010
Two more sprites for all!
Gah I finally fixed Sarah's face so that her face doesn't look like it's one foot wide.
I feel like I cheated by using hair to cover up the problem, but it's probably good enough that I know not to make such wide cheeks/jaw the next time I draw her.
Oh Helena, why are you so pretty?
And why do you smell a bit like a Mary Sue?
Hmmmmmm.
Tomorrow I will draw Wendy (hopefully I won't be too stressed out from work to draw -_-) and all 12 characters will be done! I've gotta hurry up and organize a clothe-me contest or something so they don't stay naked all winter... mumblemumble.
Many of these sprites are available for free use in your own games or other graphic needs here:
The ones up there are optimized to be cropped, edited (clothe them before use!) and used in a game at a 800x600 resolution. Why 800x600? :3 Because 1024x768 games do not fit on my Netbook's 1024x600 screen, that's why.
October 25, 2010
Various programs
Hello Everyone!
It may have seemed like I may had went off to play SC2 night and day again, but it's not true! I have done some things this past week + one day.
Checked out a bunch of software:
All this checking out other software feels like reinventing the wheel, it was interesting to see the working environment of the games created in these environments.
Live Maker: http://www.livemaker.net/
It is the most popular choice these days
in the Japanese scene for creating a visual novel.
It is pretty easy to use. Even a dunderhead such as myself
was able to make some stuff appear on the screen in a mere 15 minutes
by following the (pretty explanatory but in Japanese) tutorials.
Yep, here be graphics and text.
I didn't resize anything, so things are kind of floating and cut off.
(but easily fixable in your favorite image editing software)
The left side is a graphic organizer for the game.
The blue box is one of the nodes from the visual organized being edited.
On the bottom left you can see the program can also update itself.
The blue box is one of the nodes from the visual organized being edited.
On the bottom left you can see the program can also update itself.
I like the idea of a visual organizer,
but unfortunately it's unable to display text in any way other than full width.
Ｆｏｒ ｔｈｉｓ ｒｅａｓｏｎ， Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ ｌｏｏｋｓ ｒｅａｌｌｙ ｗｅｉｒｄ ｉｎ ＬｉｖｅＭａｋｅｒ．
It also cannot display any graphics other than it's own GaleGraphics format.
(PNG, JPG, GIF, and BMP can be converted into .GAL
using a second program included in the distribution of LiveMaker)
but unfortunately it's unable to display text in any way other than full width.
Ｆｏｒ ｔｈｉｓ ｒｅａｓｏｎ， Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ ｌｏｏｋｓ ｒｅａｌｌｙ ｗｅｉｒｄ ｉｎ ＬｉｖｅＭａｋｅｒ．
It also cannot display any graphics other than it's own GaleGraphics format.
(PNG, JPG, GIF, and BMP can be converted into .GAL
using a second program included in the distribution of LiveMaker)
CatSystem2: http://cs2.suki.jp/
It looks promising, but I'm still in the process
of reading the (rather extensive) manual.
Lanovee: http://lanovee.e-frontier.co.jp/
of reading the (rather extensive) manual.
Lanovee: http://lanovee.e-frontier.co.jp/
Looks promising, right??
Yes, kind of like Hatsune Miku.
Oh yeah, and it's 9800 yen retail. (That's about $100USD)
Comic Maker: http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~mix/comicmaker.htm
(believe it or not, it took almost 2 hours to get this far. OTL)
Lanovee's special feature is that it offers a TTS (text to speech) engine called "moe voice system", which will read the lines said by a female character to the gamer so that the game maker doesn't need to recruit voice actors to voice act the script..
Yes, kind of like Hatsune Miku.
o_o hey, wait a second, I'm pretty sure I had the same idea several years ago of using TTS instead of voice actors. I was probably not the first one to think of it, but it's nice to see a vnovel maker that uses TTS.
I downloaded the demo and tried it out, but the demo was failing to work left and right (I think it was a locality issue, so hopefully it can be fixed), and it did not match what was shown in the tutorial video.
Oh yeah, and it's 9800 yen retail. (That's about $100USD)
Comic Maker: http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~mix/comicmaker.htm
The "Visual Novel Making for Dummies" program of Japan.
Indeed the interface is (probably too) simple,
but it's also tough to figure out how to do some basic things,
such as displaying text in the actual text box
instead of somewhere at the top left.
LemoNovel: http://www.le-mo.jp/lemo/products/LemoNovel/
This is probably the easiest visual novel tool out there.
The scripting language is unbelievably simple,
and it accepts all sorts of graphics and sound formats,
...except PNGs :( it doesn't support alpha channel graphics.
The downside (or upside?) is that the resulting published game is a flash game.
Novelty: http://visualnovelty.com/
Been checking this software out for years.
I don't think I really need to write anymore about this software,
since it is in English and you can check it out yourself ;)
Adventure Game Studio: http://www.bigbluecup.com/
Since all visual novels are adventure games,
I thought I would check out the adventure game scene.
While I love the games produced using AGS,
I'm not totally convinced this is what I'm looking for.
Pro: It was super easy to make a walking character and to make an image map. Also the community was the most friendliest, funnniest, and helpful bunch I have ever met on the internet.
Con: No non-alphabet character support. 漢字は禁物。
Adventure Game Studio: http://www.bigbluecup.com/
I thought I would check out the adventure game scene.
While I love the games produced using AGS,
I'm not totally convinced this is what I'm looking for.
Pro: It was super easy to make a walking character and to make an image map. Also the community was the most friendliest, funnniest, and helpful bunch I have ever met on the internet.
Con: No non-alphabet character support. 漢字は禁物。
November production schedule and more plot brainstorming:
The plot is like a gigantic tangled ball of yarn, and storytelling is untangling that mess.
October 17, 2010
Free Sprites and other goodie goodies.
A list of free sprites since 2007.
To use as you please (edit, modify, recolor, re-clothe, etc)
Teacher at a podium. Four emotions.
http://www.mediafire.com/?q57tbq6yy3vn1sc
Ayame (four emotions)
To use as you please (edit, modify, recolor, re-clothe, etc)
Teacher at a podium. Four emotions.
http://www.mediafire.com/?q57tbq6yy3vn1sc
Ayame (four emotions)
Ayame's Sister. Two emotions.
Wendy. Eight distinct Emotions.
Peter. Five emotions.
Fiona, 7 (or 8?) emotions.
She needs a little cleaning up around the head
to be used in dark settings.
Judy, Jewel version. Two poses.
This is my favorite version of Judy to date.
The sky in the morning, mid-noon, sunset, and night time.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ocf5mi5a8ia1brl
Ye old game demo (less than 5 minutes of gameplay):
Windows: http://www.mediafire.com/?30ahike66mp53fi
Mac: http://www.mediafire.com/?uns34ibwvlloi3w
Linux: http://www.mediafire.com/?8h2xjllrglfjyu4
And last but not least, a game to recommend:
A facinating visual presentation.
Future freebies to be categorized under the Label "freebies"
http://trueheartprojects.blogspot.com/search/label/freebies
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