Thursday, June 26, 2014

I'm going to cease updating this blog.

I couldn't foresee Elspeth's Garden being completed anytime soon, it's not the fault of the engines I'm using, but a design decision that ultimately cost me.

Do not do pre-rendered 3D on 2D backdrop unless you know how to align them perfectly.  Though static screenshots look nice, any glitch in animation alignment will be immediately noticeable and make the game feel amateurish.  It is no wonder that most 2D tactics games use pixelart on a usually top-down, only occasionally isometric grid... this makes the animations fit seamlessly. 

Thus I will either have to transition the whole game to Unity3D where I can use the 3D character models as-is (without the glitchiness of prerendered frames), or I'll have to make everything be either top-down or in pixel-art style, which is an additional art cost.  Why is this important?  Only VN fans and those who care only about the story would not mind the glitchy animations.  But since this is being marketed as a tactics game, the actual execution of gameplay animations is just...ugh.  Maybe 7 years ago I'll probably get away with it, but not in today's indie games climate.

I'll also have to cancel any plans I had with past collaborations.  I'm sorry but I can only work on my own IP.  And I'm not as prolific and gungho as I was before.  I can barely make progress in my own projects.  For example there was this really awesome concept of a fully voiced semi-animated nukige that's script and voice complete, but the fact that it practically requires a new CG for every two lines of dialogue makes it a prohibitive project.  I tried to revisit a couple of times but I just don't think I have the patience for it at this time.

Where I'm going from here.

I keep on starting projects, hoping that the newer one is simpler and shorter to make so I could actually finish it before the honeymoon period is over and the whole thing starts to feel like a drag.  I am motivated to keep releasing things so that I can remain relevant as a creator in the EVN, hobbyist, and indie communities.  Plus, ultimately I like the things I do, even if I tend to not want to touch things with a 10-foot pole once packaged and released.

My active projects are now thus:

Indisputable Sovereignty


Note this is NOT an anti-Chinese game (I myself have Chinese blood).  It is a jet fighter eroge set in the South China Sea poking fun at the China central government policies and the PLA.  And the Philippine government itself is not immune to my mockery.  I've been keeping things balanced and pushing things to the edge of taste.  Development has gone a bit more slowly recently ever since the Vietnam oil rig incident.  People are dying now because of tensions so all the more I have to tread lightly.  Since this game is heavily dependent on current events, sometimes I just have to stop and "wait and see" before writing some more.  For example, since the new Chinese map came out this month, I had to search and replace "Nine-dash lines" with "Ten-dash lines" since the tenth line now makes no doubt that it encircles Taiwan.

If you've noticed with the low resolution and basic UI, it's intended to be a mobile-first (Android) game first, PC second.  So while I consider it a "big project" (4 heroines with full backstories and multiple HCG sequences), playing may feel like you're tapping at one of the Voltage otome games.  So don't expect a full HD experience like with recent games, even though I have 3D dogfight sequences programmed in Animation Transform Language (ATL).  This was a conscious design decision because otherwise I'd be experiencing the same technical performance problems as Sunrider, a full HD game with prerendered 3D w/ ATL animations.

So development of that as well as further updates from me are here:  http://gdidoujins.tumblr.com/

I'm basically moving to Tumblr since that's where the action is at.  I'm also going to resurrect my dormant Pixiv account (I have no deviantart since prior to EVNs I wasn't drawing much at all).  You can also check me out on Twitter although be warned I tend to ramble about a lot of personal things which may be offensive to some people.

[Shoujo-style 18+ Yuri Project]

 What started out as something I was only mildly considering became a full-scale viable project.  I commissioned concept art from one of the best artists on the scene and the result:

as well as the Twitter reactions made it clear that I've hit the jackpot with this concept.  Now shoujo artists rarely make nukige (even female artists working on nukige adapt a typical bishoujo character design), thus I will be responsible for *those* scenes.  I want to challenge myself to see if I can keep the beautiful design of the concept.  Shoujo design is very detailed and refined so I'll probably need to use a super big canvas.  I will post an update once I've a version of the designs which I drew myself.  I'm more of a chameleon grunt artist -- unofficially trained so a blank canvas is my worst enemy.  But give me cues and I can mimic the style I want.

One of the things I noticed when hitting the Twitter jackpot (basically, a tweet you made that became exceedingly popular) was how many women favorited that tweet.  So knowing the audience, I have resolved to keep this classy despite being nukige.  Don't worry, there will be no nonconsensual scenes; everything will be sex-positive.  Although there are some itches which I want to scratch--- anyways, we'll see.  Plus, it's basically a time period in the 18th century during the height of the Spanish Empire and where spices were being traded, for the first time, circumnavigating the globe.  There is no chance in hell the people would speak with modern slang.  Technically they should be speaking Spanish but I'm keeping the format as neutral technical English for now.   It's also going to be presented simply and minimalistically with NVL narration and with lots of research.  I'll let the pictures and music take care of the atmosphere, it makes it easy for me if there's no fancy programming planned.

The story is complete in my head, I'm currently outlining it and doing research.  I don't know yet when I'll make a dedicated update site for that game, but as I'm mentioned before, I'm moving to Tumblr.

So in summary:  Twitter, Tumblr, and Pixiv.  Those are now my active sites, where I can get immediate feedback.





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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Animation Discussion

Sorry for interrupting the regular state-of-hobby-devving but I feel I must share this Twitter conversation with anyone who cares about the animation industry(w/c needs help!), which is the fandom that eventually showed me manga, JRPGs, VNs, and doujinshi.
























Now why on earth would I advocate Flash style animation? Ever since western animation adapted the paperless/cut-out/Flash approach, they have been outsourcing less and been able to produce more content in-house at a more consistent quality. The production environment resembles a sweatshop less and is more like a 3D studio -- which uses the same production routines such as assembling character builds, adding bones, meshes, and tweening, -- but with less intensive 2D renders (in fact, Harmony itself is a 3D program).

Now let's ignore 3D for a moment. For me, I don't mind cel-shaded anime if the story is good enough, though there are those who are still bothered by it regardless of how far 3D cel-shading has come. Let's focus on 2D. Since western 2D animation rarely uses hand-drawn frames nowadays (at most they use Wacom-drawn frames) and are now almost fully cut-out... the major change-over started around 2007 or so... one way to make better East-West collaborations is to adapt a common production technique, especially one where you can send character builds and assemblies over and an animator across the pond can immediately start animating.

Painstakingly hand-drawing every frame of animation is fine and is actually recommended if you're creating Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. But doing the same for Mangaka-san to Assistant-san? Why not just pull a Nyaruko: Crawling With Love. Sure the purists will whine and complain, but just like with modern mobile F2P touch-screen games with microtransactions, the new generation can grow up knowing nothing else, while the old generation can be smug about remembering when animation and games were superior - once upon a time.

I mean, THIS is Flash animation. You can get used to it.
If still in doubt just look at Live2D. The character builds are very similar to Harmony builds (or Flash builds but with full textures). You just need the mesh deform and the movements can be very convincing. What Live2D brings to the table is realtime bone manipulation that a game engine can use, but otherwise it's EXACTLY the same animation principle being used for Flash and Harmony.
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Sunday, April 20, 2014

State of the Hobbyist

This post has been inspired by a discussion on Chief's twitter .  While I wish everyone else on the scene the best of luck and respect the decisions they made in going about their projects, I'm going to explain what made me come up with the design decisions on my current project.

My experience working in teams -- with the exception of ATP Projects and Tall Tales Productions -- has been less than stellar.  Likewise with buying commissions -- it's not the quality of the commissions per se since they're worth it if I were just buying to support artists -- it's the whole hassle of the system.  I have also learned rather painfully not to dedicate too much time to a project if the IP isn't mine, since the producer can just quit leaving me with some expense and a lot of wasted time.

Maybe the good force of the universe is telling me to stay as a hobbyist.  So I'm not going to invest any money anymore -- besides maybe buying a software package or two.

Elspeth's Garden is on hiatus, but is not shelved, due to me trying to figure out how better work on it so it won't just die when it's released out there.

In the meantime, I'm working on Indisputable Sovereignty a politically-motivated satirical jet-combat ero dating sim with the following glorious 2006-era specifications (since there's no way I can make a pretty HD resolution VN by myself):

*brilliant 800x480 resolution for 3rd-world smartphones
*large blocky text for maximum readability
*Altogether 2006-inspired NVL design with filtered photos
*Nintendo 3DS-inspired super minimalistic GUI, ADV dialogue, and menu-based gameplay system

I had commissioned just enough assets to give me a headstart (like, way back in 2013), it was kinda costly for me but in hindsight just asking for character sheets and 3D models helps in a long way since I can just photoshop or render my way to create the final graphics. (For all the rest, there's filtered photos!)  The lower resolution really does go a long way in masking the amateur-ness of it all.

I'm finding that just going ahead making it a full-blown eroge has inspired me so much, since this decision just flipped a switch in my brain that nothing is held sacred, so that really made me let out a tidal wave of writing all sorts of politically-motivated satire.  Even if it were to make its way to 2014's Worst Ofs or Something Awful, it would actually make me happy since it would have made its mark on the world -- since this is me writing my heart out.

On the other hand the part of the problem with Elspeth's Garden is that since it's a team effort, I have to respect the contributors so I can't make similarly risky decisions, that's why I'm biding my time with it.

So back to Indisputable Sovereignty (and other stories), I'm really stuffing it feature rich with full length scenes, I aim to make it at least 4 hours in play so it will really stick with you (that's the problem with 30-minute nanoreno games, they can be so pretty but they still have to be really impactful).  I'm also stuffing it with some kinetic novels I wrote in the past couple of years.

In other news, right now I'm still trying to become an expert in the Unity3D engine ever since getting into it in 2011, but this time I'll try to do programming by myself.  It's sort of necessary as well for professional advancement.  As far as releasing anything it will strictly be for hobby purposes just like cooking just for yourself or your family -- there is absolutely no way I can release a quality 3D game even if I paid money for the art assets -- there's just too many ways a 3D game can just break apart during gameplay it's not even funny. Forget about Old Home Labyrinth it won't pass muster in today's environment.  But it's kinda amazing how the random dungeon system there is EXACTLY the same layout as in Conception II, an excellent game.  Man.
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Monday, March 10, 2014

Types of Visual Novel Structures

So I was reading a review of World End Economica on Siliconera and the author posted this in the comments:

Well VN's fall on a spectrum. There are hybrid designs that mix in parts of other games, and on the other end there are games like these that are zero interaction, rarely localized PC releases. I usually say people should ease themselves into visual novels slowly. A good sequence might be
1. A hybrid crowd pleaser (Ace Attorney or Professor Layton are obvious starting points)
2. A cinematic focused or locked room type games (999 or Danganropa are solid options here)
3. Date sims! My favorites are Katawa Shoujo and My Hatoful Boyfriend
4. Full on Visual Novels. If you've made it this far and are still game to keep going then it's time to start looking into MangaGamer's releases, and to start looking into fan translated ROMs for games that didn't see localization. Try to find Radical Dreamers if you can, it's the little known visual novel SNES sequel to Chrono Trigger. It's worth experiencing.

I am trying my hardest to go starting from 4 up to 1.  Mainly because my first exposure with VNs was not with Ace Attorney or 999 (surprisingly), but by JAST USA / Peter Payne stuff.  I have since amended my exposure and now rarely read PC-only VNs now. 

On the dev front, not being much of a writer and unable to have either the skill nor the budget for a lot of unique HD art assets its difficult to find success with #4.  So I've been adapting a lot of the structural design of #2 and #1... well mainly, lots of animations, lower resolutions (to make it easier to make assets and to animate them, since I don't have a huge canvas I need to fill).

I'm trying to find other types of VN gameplay besides escape the room puzzles, giving gifts to rack up points (dating sims), elimination rounds where the character roster is slowly reduced, and point and click investigations.  Yes, there are dungeon crawlers and turn-based RPGs, but that's a whole nother genre, technically speaking.  I need to find more gameplay types that can fit into the medium that won't be considered tacked on like minigames (and then the players would demand that they be skippable).

Are the segments in Virtues Last Reward skippable?  Of course not.  They're integral to the game.

And yet nobody explicitly says that VLR is a VN.  They just praise the narrative experience.
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Monday, February 24, 2014

The New Gaming Order


How do I cross this uncanny valley?  Granted the stakes in VN is but a microcosm of the larger scene, but the same economics applies.

I already know I will never meet the best EVN groups in the world (you know who you are), but sometimes I wonder if it's worth a middling effort or if I would be better off making something similar to dating pigeons or llamas or whatever sillyness is needed just to have a work that people will remember.
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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Last dude to get onboard Twitter whatever that thing is


And there we go.  I don't have much more to say, other than less blogging.  The indie scene is really cutthroat now, so I'd rather people pay attention to completed games rather than whatever popular is upcoming on the horizon.  And so I'll also do my part by not consuming peoples' attention unless I really have something completed worth showing.
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