Nanowrimo, Hour Novel ... the fun never ends!

This is a short game I made for Hour Novel, in an hour: http://www.mediafire.com/?jpl8l02ay07wlkg

It is incomplete, but I have an idea as to how I want to write it and end it, so maybe one day, I'll go back and finish writing it? :)

If you can make a visual novel, you should participate too!

A thread with info about it is here: http://www.visualnovelty.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1091

Also I am participating in nanowrimo this year. If I'm successful, I'll have a 50k novel by the end of the month. If not, well, I will at least have a 10k novel by the end of this month, since that's how much I have written right now. I think of all the things about nanowrimo, I am most impressed that as a writer I have grown so much that I have the gall to tackle a hard challenge like this. Just last year I thought I was such a horrible writer I couldn't possibly write a novel, but now I have more confidence in my storytelling. NOT that I'm all that wildly proud of what I've written for nanowrimo so far. It's not exactly sharing quality. Heh.

Also I anticipate to draw almost nothing this month because nanowrimo and RO2's beta testing will probably take up all of my free time. oO Any commentaries will be on my youtube, specifically in this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFCD90B650786E486

See you all December!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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)

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/

Looks promising, right??

    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.

 (believe it or not, it took almost 2 hours to get this far. OTL)

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。

November production schedule and more plot brainstorming:

The plot is like a gigantic tangled ball of yarn, and storytelling is untangling that mess.

    I didn't want to say anything until I had something concrete (=playable game) to show, but there is a plan right now to get something out by mid November. That is, assuming I don't move any time soon. I've been anticipating to move since August, so it's a little tough to settle down and begin to work on something. Hopefully I'll move soon so that I can settle down and really focus. At this rate, I might have to unpack a few things that I've already packed up in anticipation of moving. Oh, how I miss my watercolors!

Playing with Novelty using Felicia's Route

Tap tap tap novelty.
Sometimes I listen to two playlists at once. Each one plays to one ear...
You'd think it would drive a person crazy, but I find it to be pretty exhilarating.

Tonight I'm testing out the conversion stage my game making plan, which goes something like this:

1. Outline (plan) entire plot.

2. Convert plot outline to in-game.

3. Write story (script) based on plot.

3. Create graphics as needed in script.

4. Seduce composer to compose/give music.

I used to vaguely try to follow this order or production:

1. Generate drawings & illustrating for key points of plot

2. write script so that the series of events are not awkward/well explained

3. Profit?

but well, you can see the obvious fallacy there in that it's too vague and not really considerate of the story, which should be central to an Adventure Game.


But even with the new, more sane order of production, since I haven't tried following that process of production before, I don't know what things I should be doing or avoiding in order to avoid trouble in the next step. Since I'm drawing a blank with writing and drawing tonight, I thought I would try converting a branch that is already done to see how well or poorly it converts.

The page names are boggling my mind (since they're all names entirely comprised of numbers, such as 01321, 0132212.. etc) but I don't think it's anything I can't get used to, although I've gotta admit searching for the freemind bubble that corresponds with 0132213212 can be pretty confusing.

I think the solution to this is to have sub-chapters within normal chapters so that freemind bubbles with pages that are named 0132121, 0132122, 0132211, 0132212 can all be categorized under one folder called 0132, and then those pages could be renamed to something shorter like 121, 122, 211, 212, but if there's another node named 121, 122, 211, or 212, that could cause a lot of problems when it comes to branching and linking stories later on.
 
In any event, I can get used to using all these numbers. Maybe in a week or two 0132 will automatically make me think "Oh yeah, that's Fifi's path".



This reminds me of a thought I had years ago: I wish PowerPoint was a viable VN medium, because it pretty much has everything I want out of a VN creation program. The only thing it obviously lacks is actual game-like functionality, such as the ability to save and load progress. Bummer!