Delayed to 2013

So yeah, I made an internal deliberation.  No use killing myself to get Elspeth's Garden done when it's already outdated.  The graphics by now already lack polish (in today's constantly increasing standard) but I will still push through and use what I have to get it finished.  One thing I didn't want to compromise on was the story and writing.  Since my belief is if something is that good, it will warrant a remake anyway.  But the priority right now is just completion and recovering investment.  So I just hope people will find the game not too unattractive to still want to pay for it.  I definitely overstretched myself this time.

I mean, releasing this year?  Foggetaboutit.  Not when any "Best of 2012" will be a three-way battle between Katawa Shoujo (most popular VN), Analogue (most successful VN for any single creator), and Loren Amazon Princess (more RPG than VN, but still, basically the most technologically advanced and probably the most expensive Ren'Py game ever made).  With that kind of competition, I might as well get my magnum opus into the running next year instead.  Hopefully by next year everybody would have finished playing and reviewing those other games.  I for one will probably take a few weeks to play Loren RPG.

Which means, for the remainder of this year, I'll have more time to devote to pure hentai projects, which luckily, have their own audience and ecosystem (though it happens to involve more piracy sites).  For EVNs, it's still our monopoly in that genre.  But now, instead of taking 6 hours to stitch a single animation effects filmstrip in 8 directions, it takes 6 hours to direct a single hentai sequence (with complete pans/zooms and cut-ins).  I need more time.

Delays delays delays delays delays delays ugh

Old Home Labyrinth, a procedural dungeon exploration game, 90% complete.  Reason for the delay:  apparently experienced Unity programmers are in very high demand.  And I don't want to send a nagging email since the programmer was willing to put the finishing touches for free and we've become good friends, but he's just become busy.

Idoling Alice from Neko-Soft, a traditional BxG with simulator.  70% complete.  It only has one heroine but she has dozens of ecchi CGs which I didn't know about when I signed up for the project.  CGs aren't the only culprit though... I still have to execute a good chunk of monele's gargantuan 40-page gameplay design document.  I've been busy, uh... commissioning the soundtrack I guess.

Uh, yeah, this game, whatever it's called.  It's still less than 50% sadly since I've been busy with the other projects.  Making this game is like directing machinima.  It takes 6 hours just to stitch together the filmstrips for the animations of one character (probably turning off the internet while working should speed that up).  The whole "narrative" text has been ditched completely (Taleweaver submitted in screenplay format), so you won't ever find this game on VNDB according to their strict definition.  Whatever, it has western style art and is proud of that fact.  This is a full-fledged strategy RPG, not a hybrid.  I really need to play Koihime Musou (both the strategy VN and the new all-ages web-game) to get ideas, since when I watched the anime it didn't really appeal to me.  I started this project partly because I was pissed off at the Valkyria Chronicles franchise going downhill -- I need to somehow capture that magic despite a simpler 2D grid system, right now I don't think I have it yet.

Thankfully, the Saga of Original Sin, also by Neko-Soft, is not delayed.  It's already over 100K words and the artists are constantly updating the Dropbox... if only what they upload are the requested CGs or additional sprite poses rather than some random lolis touching themselves.  Ah well, such is art.  I have the smallest role in this project, just a code-monkey, but this one is turning out to be the most massive, bigger than Elspeth's Garden if you take away its gameplay.  Although that one was my magnum opus, this one will be... goodness, I have no idea.

Sometimes I wish I were just a Consumer instead of a Producer

Something I noticed is that when you're on a creation streak (whether managing or producing assets), you tend to not want to consume things.  Ever since November I've barely touched my PS3 library and I've only been keeping up with the most important anime series.  Sometimes I don't even feel like just chilling or relaxing because then I'd feel guilty it would cut into productive time.

And then when I do play some games, it's always with that critical eye.  What's being done right?  What can be improved upon?  What techniques would be nice to adopt?  Why can't I just relax and enjoy the damn game for what it is?!

Maybe I should just aim to make a singular hit like World of Goo and not have to worry about making another game ever again! (Just keep porting, and porting, and porting... and raking in the dough).


Even though every week and weekend has been filled with VN type development, sadly I was not able to do much for Elspeth's Garden.  Taleweaver finished the main script but we're now both up to our necks doing Neko-Soft stuff.  Instead of plugging in Elspeth's Garden scripts I'm programming Idoling Alice interfaces instead.

Why should I prioritize their work instead of my own?  Well, a team of full-time artists dedicated to visual novel games just don't drop by everyday.  And the reason why you don't contact them is because they're full-timers -- their loyalty is to Neko-Soft's projects and no one else's.  That like solves the problem of why 90% of VN type games don't get finished right then and there!  The bane of EVNs essentially solved!  Having consistent original art quality!  Not being stingy with CGs!    If I impress with my contribution perhaps I would get the needed help for my projects later on.

I'm going to need to call some time off so I can get back to EG eventually.  And especially when JRPG season rolls around this coming March - May (I didn't get FF XIII-2).

I don't want this to become the blog of someone yakking from within an organization.  It's just sometimes from outside you see all these awesome teams with cool art and it's easy to immediately assume all is going well.  They seem competent with the art -- so for sure they must have other aspects of production perfectly down pat... right?  Right?  In the end, we're still all just a bunch of random people on the internet... no matter how businesslike a front we may put up.

I think I violated my own self-imposed rule to not have blogs that complain anymore... instead of blog post that only announce releases.  Just had to get this out of my system.  Remember the Unity3D game from way back when?  It's almost done...