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.